Buy this Eddie Vedder performance of Bruce Springsteen’s beautiful My City Of Ruins through iTunes for only $0.99. Proceeds from the sale of the track benefit Artists for Peace and Justice Haiti Relief.
Artists for Peace and Justice support the work of Fr. Rick Frechette in Haiti. Rick Frechette is a Passionist priest and doctor who has worked in the slums of Haiti for over 20 years. He founded two hospitals, an orphanage, and numerous street schools and clinics.
The Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA), United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC), International Lactation Consultant Association/United States Lactation Consultant Association (ILCA/USLCA), and La Leche League International (LLLI) are jointly issuing an urgent call for human milk donations for premature infants in Haiti, as well as sick and premature infants in the United States.
This week the first shipment of human milk from mothers in the United States will be shipped to the U.S. Navy Ship “Comfort” stationed outside Haiti. “Comfort” is currently set up with a neonatal intensive care unit and medical personnel to provide urgent care to victims of the earthquake. An International Board Certified Lactation Consultant stationed at the U.S. Navy base in Bethesda, MD is assisting with providing breast pump equipment and supplies to the “Comfort.” Dr. Erika Beard-Irvine, pediatric neonatologist, is on board the “Comfort” to coordinate distribution of the milk to infants in need. HMBANA, USBC, ILCA/USLCA, and LLL are responding to requests to provide milk for both premature infants and at-risk mothers who have recently delivered babies on board the U.S.N.S. Comfort, but an urgent need exists for additional donations.
At the current time, the infrastructure to deliver human milk on land to Haiti infants has not yet been established. As soon as that infrastructure is in place, additional donations will be provided to older infants.
Mothers who are willing to donate human milk should contact their regional Mothers’ Milk Bank of HMBANA. A list of regional milk banks is available at the HMBANA website at http://www.hmbana.org.
Currently milk banks are already low on donor milk. New milk donations will be used for both Haiti victims as well as to replenish donor supplies to continue to serve sick and premature infants in the U.S. Donor milk provides unique protection for fragile preterm infants. Financial donations are also strongly encouraged to allow HMBANA, a nonprofit organization, to continue serving infants in need.
UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the Emergency Nutrition Network, and medical professionals all recommend that breastfeeding and human milk be used for infants in disasters or emergencies. Human milk is life-saving due to its disease prevention properties. It is safe, clean, and does not depend on water which is often unavailable or contaminated in an emergency. Relief workers, health care providers, and other volunteers are urged to provide support for breastfeeding mothers to enable them to continue breastfeeding, and to assist pregnant and postpartum women in initiating and sustaining breastfeeding.
Today’s briefing for NGOs at the United Nations was part of the Department of Public Information’s (DPI) Faith Series, “Islam and its Message of Peace and Understanding among Civilizations.
I was particularly impressed with one of the speakers: Dr. Shirin Ebadi. She is a human rights lawyer and activist from Iran, and was the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
These days, her passion is the PeaceJam Foundation.
Dr. Ebadi explained to the audience how PeaceJam got started. In 1993 Dawn Engle and Ivan Suvanjieff noticed that more and more kids in their working class neighborhood in Denver seemed to be quitting school and joining gangs. One day, as Ivan was leaving for work he saw four young boys, he knew, carrying guns and he called them over to talk.
He asked, “Why aren’t you in school?
The boys answered, “They don’t teach anything there, that we are interested in learning.
He asked them, “Who is the President of the United States?
They answered, “Who cares? What did he ever do for us?”
He asked, What country is our neighbor to the north?
They said, “We don’t know and we don’t care.”
Ivan asked, “Did you ever learn anything useful from any teacher you ever had?”
The boys said, “The teachers don’t understand poverty. They don’t understand where poverty takes you.”
Then Ivan asked, “Who would you like to be your teacher?”
One of the boys answered, “Desmond Tutu.” The boys went on to add that they would also like to be taught by Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.
This conversation was the inspiration for PeaceJam. Ivan thought, maybe what Denver needed was to put young people together with Nobel Peace Laureates like Tutu, to inspire young people to use their energy to work for positive change. Maybe this was what the world needed.
Before long, the PeaceJam program was launched, and to date over 600,000 young people have participated in the USA and around the world.
“The mission of the PeaceJam Foundation is to create young leaders committed to positive change in themselves, their communities and the world through the inspiration of Nobel Peace Laureates who pass on the spirit, skills, and wisdom they embody.”
The Core Components of PeaceJam Programs are: Education, Inspiration and Action.
Education – PeaceJam’s curricula are standards-based and designed to stimulate youths’ critical thinking skills, strengthen their research skills, increase their conflict resolution and leadership skills, and promote reflection and action.
Inspiration – Each curriculum teaches about the lives and work of the Nobel Peace Laureates through age-appropriate activities and content. Youth get to know the personal and harrowing stories of the 12 PeaceJam Nobel Peace Laureates and how these role models work to solve problems through non-violence.
Action – On September 16, 2006 10 Nobel Peace Laureates gathered in Denver, Colorado. It was the largest gathering of Nobel Peace Prize winners in U.S. history. The laureates issued a challenge to the youth of the world, the Global Call to Action. This is what they said:
“Today we ask the young leaders of PeaceJam, and the youth of the entire world, to join us in a Global Call to Action. For the next ten years, we invite them to work side by side with us as we address ten fundamental issues. These ten core problems are at the root of much of the suffering in our world, and we believe that young people can mobilize to make a difference in these ten key areas. Over the coming decade, we will continue to lead this effort, which is being launched today at the 10th Anniversary Celebration of the PeaceJam Foundation.
It is our hope that by launching this ten-year campaign, we can inspire people of all ages, worldwide, to work for change. Over the next ten years, we hope to inspire over a billion acts of service and peace”
PeaceJam also brings Nobel Peace Prize winners together with high-school aged youth for two-day PeaceJam Youth Conferences.
At today’s briefing Dr. Ebadi announced the launch of the PeaceJam Foundation’s Middle East Program. PeaceJam has already, as Bishop Tutu recently commented, “made a huge, huge difference in the lives of many young people by giving them hope and direction.” Hopefully it will make a big difference in the future of the Middle East by empowering the youth there to become the agents of change that region so desperately needs.
Prostitution is not illegal in Rhode Island, nor is it regulated. Only street prostitution is prohibited.
This has created a favorable climate for sex related businesses. Massage parlors, strip clubs, and “spas” have proliferated as well as sex trafficking and sex slavery.
Recently, girls under the age of eighteen were discovered dancing in strip clubs in the State and right now according to Rhode Island law, that’s not illegal.
State Rep. Joanne Giannini is currently working on a bill to prohibit minors from working in strip clubs. She blames legalized prostitution for creating the atmosphere where such a thing could happen in the first place.
If Ms. Giannini really wants to change the climate; reduce the number of sex clubs, fight human trafficking and protect girls and boys, I would suggest that she go for the jugular and sponsor a bill that makes paying for sex illegal. Stop the demand! It has worked well elsewhere and I the think Rhode Islanders will appreciate the change in climate.
A new family centered approach to maternal and newborn child care piloted in the Hospital Ramón Sarda in Buenos Aries is decreasing neo-natal mortality and will be replicated on a massive scale by UNICEF around the world.
Dr. Miguel Larguia, who has been with the hospital for 40 years, is the person responsible for the new approach.
“The concept of family-centred hospitals is a real change of paradigm because we now recognize as the owners of the house, not the medical doctors or the health agents, but the pregnant mothers and their babies,” he said.
Key features of the program include:
Involvement of fathers in every stage of the process
Encouragement of mothers to breastfeed
Parents have 24 hour access to their newborn
Special days for other family members to visit and special briefings for them on what to expect, (Especially in the a case of premature births or severe health challenges)
Free on-site residence for mothers whose babies must stay in hospital for an extended period. (There’s room for 38 mothers at the residence, and they stay an average of two months.)
“This model includes practices that have been shown to be effective in preventing neo-natal mortality,” said UNICEF Health Specialist Zulma Ortiz. “And all of them are based specifically in the relationship between the mother and the son or the daughter – and also the whole family – so the idea is to promote the implementation of this strategy all over the world.”
Two thirds of neonatal and young child deaths – over 6 million deaths each year – are preventable. Supporting programmes like this one is an efficient, cost-effective way to help children survive.
The UNICEF Executive Board meets this week at UN Headquarters in New York. The Executive Board is the governing body of UNICEF. It consists of 36 members representing the five regional groups of Member States at the UN. This year the members are from
Africa
Cameroon, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Sudan, Zimbabwe
Eastern Europe
Croatia, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovenia
Asia
Bangladesh, China, India, Iran, Malaysia, Myanmar, Republic of Korea
Latin America and the Caribbean
Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, Uruguay
Western Europe and Others
Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United States of America
UNICEF reports through its Executive Board to the United Nations General Assembly and to the Economic and Social Council. The role of the board is to oversee the work of UNICEF, to recommend new initiatives and to consult with the Secretary General on the appointment of the UNICEF Executive Director.
Highlighting this annual meeting will be a special focus on global health, with a particular focus on polio eradication.
Early in May several NGOs urged their members to write to their government leaders and and urge them to personally attend the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development, originally scheduled for June 1-3, here in New York. Only occasionally do we get to see results from the letters and emails we send to government officials but it is clear that our our action in May is having an impact. The US Mission to the UN indicated that more that 700 letters were received on this topic!
The impact of the global financial and economic crisis continues to cut deeper into the economies of the world, especially in the so-called developing world. Since the beginning of May government representatives at the UN have been meeting regularly to negotiate the text of an outcome document for the UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development now scheduled for the 24th-26th June 2009.
Background
One of our NGO colleagues, who has been monitoring the current negotiations, reports the following:
Areas of considerable agreement among the governments: need follow up reform process beyond conference itself; UN is legitimate forum as all countries represented; need improve current system and address needs of the poorer countries; keep focus on people-centered development
Areas needing further clarification before any agreement: naming the root causes of the crisis; has economic growth brought benefits to those living in poverty?
Areas of marked differences: G77 (developing countries) want to address role of specific developed countries and the international financial institutions (IFIs) in current crisis and see as essential reform of the IFIs; EU and US (developed economies) hesitant to affirm these
Even if you acted in May, please send another letter to your government leader: Below is a sample letter to President Obama
Dear President Obama:
We are writing to urge you to attend the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development that will be held from the 24th to 26th of June 2009 in New York.
Your message of hope and change has inspired people across the globe, but this current crisis has shattered many people’s hope for a better future, replacing it with despair. Developing countries are suffering disproportionately from this crisis for which they bear the least responsibility, and we believe, as you do, that peace, stability and prosperity are inextricably linked.
The responses currently proposed by the G20 are not sufficient to address the root causes of this complex crisis. And we know that real recovery for the global economy must include input from the developing world. This crisis may be the impetus for transformational change, but such change requires strong leadership. Your presence and input could make a tremendous difference and move us closer to a more equitable and sustainable global economic structure.
Yesterday, United Nations’ Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in remarks to a special General Assembly Thematic Debate on Human Trafficking related the story of Grace Akallo.
“Grace Akallo was a young high school student in Uganda who dreamed of being the first person from her village to go to university. Then came the Lord’s Resistance Army. Rebels took her and 138 other girls from their dormitory and marched them into the forest.
Grace told her story at the Security Council last week. I listened with the heaviest of hearts. “My spirit died,” she said, recounting how she was forced to kill and was repeatedly raped.
She was followed into the forest by the headmistress, Sister Rachele, who confronted the rebels. They threatened to kill her in front of the girls. She was asked to leave, but instead she faced them down, risking her own safety so that others could be freed. In the end, she was able to rescue more than 100 girls.”
The Secretary-General then challenged those present. “If this seemingly powerless educator from Uganda could face down armed rebels, surely we in this room can stand up to this threat with bold and decisive action.
Trafficking in weapons, drugs and blood diamonds has long been on the UN agenda. Now we must add people to that list.
I spoke just now about Uganda, but examples could be drawn from any of a number of countries from Asia, across the Americas, to Europe. Millions are bought and sold like chattel, most of them women and children.”
He called on member states to:
Criminalize human trafficking. All countries must ratify the UN anti-trafficking Protocol.
Prevent victimization by teaching people about their rights and protecting them.
Reduce demand.
End to impunity.
Protect the victims.
The Secretary-General’s call for a coordinated effort to combat forced labor and human trafficking comes at a time when, because of the world financial crisis and increasing restrictions on legal migration more people are likely to fall victim to traffickers. The most vulnerable, people already living in poverty, especially women and children will suffer the most.
According to a new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) entitled “The Cost of Coercion”, the value of the work done by people who are trapped in forced labor is over 20 billion US dollars per year.
Trafficking and forced labor are a scourge that reaches across the globe. The ILO report highlights facts and figures from each region.
Europe and Central Asia
Trafficking in Europe reflects shifts in patterns of economic development and the gradual enlargement of the European Union. While most of the victims identified by authorities are women trafficked for sexual exploitation, the number of cases of men trafficked for labor exploitation is on the rise. A recent case in Italy illustrates the international nature of the business of trafficking. Police discovered a group of Chinese workers trapped in forced labor in a hidden factory. A lengthy investigation revealed that the leader of the trafficking ring that brought these workers to Italy lived in a suburb of Paris.
Asia
The biggest share of the world’s forced laborers are from Asia. Many are migrants, either from elsewhere in Asia or from their home country. Three issues are of particular concern.
The persistence of bonded labor systems, particularly in South Asia, despite legislation to ban it.
Widespread trafficking of children and adults, for both sexual and labor exploitation.
Continued use of forced labor by the State and official institutions, notably in Myanmar.
Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the third highest incidence of forced labor in relation to population after Asia and Latin America. It reflects long-standing patterns of discrimination against vulnerable groups, sometimes linked to the historical legacy of slavery. People in areas of conflict are at risk, an extreme example being child soldiers. There is trafficking of people for labor and sexual exploitation both within and across African countries and to Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Women are especially affected.
Americas
Latin America accounts for the second largest number of forced laborers in the world after Asia. Those most at risk are migrant workers in sweatshops, agriculture and domestic service. The main form of forced labor is through debt bondage.
Forced labor in Latin America is closely linked to patterns of inequality and discrimination especially against indigenous peoples.
In the United States and Canada the increased focus on human trafficking have brought to light more and more cases of forced labor among foreign workers, particularly in debt bondage in agriculture and domestic service.
Middle East
Forced labor and human trafficking are closely intertwined with migration in the Middle East, particularly in the Gulf States where there is a high proportion of migrant workers mainly from Asia. Labor recruitment companies operating in source countries alter contract terms and charge high recruitment fees, which the worker must ultimately repay. Employers retain control of work visas and illegally buy, sell and trade them. These costs are also passed on to the workers creating a situation of debt bondage.
The United Nations General Assembly is considering the request of some member states for a Global Plan of Action on trafficking and forced labor. The Secretary-General urged all States, whether they support this proposal or not, to move beyond fine rhetoric and moral outrage to deeds particularly by mainstreaming the fight against human trafficking into broader programs, from poverty reduction to reducing gender discrimination.
The BBC’s Jon Leyne in Tehran says that early on Friday morning Delara Darabi made a desperate phone call to her parents, saying she could see the hangman’s noose.
“Mother they are going to execute me, please save me,” she said, before a prison official took the phone away and said: “We are going to execute your daughter and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Yesterday, Delara Darabi was hanged in Iran for murder. She was 23 years old. The murder was committed when she was 17 years old. Derabi initially confessed to the crime, taking the blame for her boyfriend, believing that as she was a minor she would receive a lesser punishment and save him from the gallows. She was dead wrong. He got ten years. She was sentenced to death.
Amnesty International and other human rights groups do not consider Delara Darabi’s trial to have been fair and claim that the Iranian judiciary ignored evidence that would have proven her innocence.
The execution of Delara Darabi brings the number of executions in Iran this year to 140. She is the second woman known to have been executed. Iran has executed at least forty two juvenile offenders since 1990, eight of them in 2008 and one on 21 January 2009, in total disregard of international law, which unequivocally bans the execution of those convicted of crimes committed when under the age of 18. Amnesty International
Karachi, Pakistan – In the same week that the Pakistani Taliban secured their demand for Islamic law in the Swat Valley, they moved into a neighboring district and won the right to preach in mosques there. This success in Buner came with little fighting – unlike in Swat, where they’d battled government forces on and off since 2007.
The move suggests that the Taliban, having gained a foothold in Swat, intend to spread their influence more broadly in Pakistan – and may face little resistance in some areas.
This is bad new for the women and girls who live there. Here’s a quick review of what life is like for women and girls under the Taliban.
The Taliban forces women to wear the burqa outside the home and to be accompanied by a male blood relative. The burqa is a garment that completely covers the body, including the face. They say the face of a women is a source of corruption for men not related to them. Women who cannot afford a burqa or do not have a male relative either stay imprisoned in their homes or risk punishment by going out.
The Taliban requires that all ground and first floor residential windows should be painted over or screened to prevent women being visible from the street.
Women are forbidden to speak loudly or laugh as no stranger should hear a woman’s voice.
The Taliban does not allow girls to go to school.
Boys may attend special religious schools where they are indoctrinated by the Taliban and trained as warriors to fight the West.
The Taliban does not allow women to work.
The Taliban does not allow women to be treated by male doctors, and since female doctors are not allowed to work, women under the Taliban have little or no access to medical care.
Women face harsh physical punishment for breaking any of these rules.
The government of Pakistan seems unable to stop the spread of the Taliban and justify compromising with them by claiming that the local populations want the Taliban to impose their fanatical brand of Sharia. In reality, the local population is terrified of opposing the Taliban because they know that their government can’t protect them. The Taliban hunts down and brutally kills anyone who opposes them. Vicious reprisals against members of the local tribal militia that tried to protect Buner are already underway.
Swat and neighboring Buner are about sixty miles from the capital, Islamabad. Pakistan, which possesses nuclear weapons, is in danger of falling completely to the Taliban. The United States is responding to this threat by intensifying predator drone attacks inside Pakistan. The only visable effect these attacks seem to be having, is to aid Taliban recruitment efforts. It’s hard to know what the answer is.
The Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA), United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC), International Lactation Consultant Association/United States Lactation Consultant Association (ILCA/USLCA), and La Leche League International (LLLI) are jointly issuing an urgent call for human milk donations for premature infants in Haiti, as well as sick and premature infants in the United States.
Early in May several NGOs urged their members to write to their government leaders and and urge them to personally attend the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development, originally scheduled for June 1-3, here in New York. Only occasionally do we get to see results from the letters and emails we send to government officials but it is clear that our our action in May is having an impact. The US Mission to the UN indicated that more that 700 letters were received on this topic!
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