Category: Gender-based discrimination

Trump’s New “Global Gag Rule” is Much, Much More Far Reaching than George W. Bush’s Policy

President Trump yesterday signed a presidential memorandum re-instating the Global Gag Rule.

For most of the day yesterday the actual text of the memorandum was not released so much of the media coverage — including our own — was based on the understanding that Donald Trump simply re-instated the same policy that existed during the George W. Bush-era administration. In fact, he did not. Rather, after the text became public last night it became clear that Trump dramatically expanded the scope of the Global Gag Rule to include all global health assistance provided by the US government.

Previously, the restrictions embedded in the Global Gag Rule were limited exclusively to NGOs that receive US government assistance for family planning and reproductive health, like contraception. These restrictions include prohibiting that NGO from counseling women that abortion is an option or lobbying foreign governments to liberalize their abortion laws. Even if the funding sources for abortion counseling come from another source, that NGO must cease that counseling or either relinquish its US funding for, say, condom distribution or obstetric surgeries.  That’s how it worked in the Bush administration–to disasterous effect.

But the Trump memo takes this a huge step further. Rather than applying the Global Gag Rule exclusively to US assistance for family planning in the developing world, which amounts to about $575 million per year, the Trump memo applies it to “global health assistance furnished by all department or agencies.” In other words, NGOs that distribute bed nets for malaria, provide childhood vaccines, support early childhood nutrition and brain development, run HIV programs, fight ebola or Zika, and much more, must now certify their compliance with the Global Gag Rule or risk losing US funds. According to analysis from PAI, a global health NGO, this impacts over $9 billion of US funds, or about 15 times more than the previous iteration of the Global Gag Rule which only impacted reproductive health assistance.

Read the full article from UN Dispatch

Joint Statement on Trump’s Global Gag Rule Re-Enactment

We, the undersigned organizations, strongly condemn President Trump’s signing of the Global Gag Rule on January 23rd 2017, one of his first acts as President of the United States.

During the Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. administrations, the Global Gag Rule prohibited foreign NGOs receiving U.S. assistance related to family planning and reproductive health from using non-U.S. funding to provide abortion services, information, counseling or referrals and from engaging in advocacy for access to safe abortion services. This policy causes real and serious harm to women around the world and is a violation of international development agreements signed by the United States. The policy leads to shortages in resources, the closure of health facilities offering services for women, a chill-effect on all related care (including the provision of family planning, contraceptive counselling, etc.) and the denial of lawful safe abortion services.

President Trump’s version of the Global Gag Rule is more extreme than past administrations and will extend to all global health assistance provided across US departments. The political and financial impacts will be significant and far-reaching. According to PAI, in monetary terms, this expanded policy will apply to as much as $9.458 billion in global health funding, which includes programming for maternal health, family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and more.

As the largest donor in the area of sexual and reproductive health, the United States has played a critical role in supporting countries to fulfill women’s rights through improved access to modern methods of contraception, strengthening of health systems, provision of essential health services to survivors of gender-based violence, among other areas. These are priority areas identified by partner countries as critical to their own development goals and their obligations under international human rights law.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, unanimously adopted by 193 countries, specifically targets universal access to sexual and reproductive health as critical to the reduction of poverty and the fulfillment of human rights. With the stroke of a pen, the United States has put this agenda in jeopardy and women around the world will suffer the indignities and often fatal consequences of this action.

Canada, and its allies, both governments and civil society organizations, must step up their efforts to safeguard and advance sexual and reproductive health and rights by increasing development financing in these areas in a comprehensive manner and by championing these issues within diplomatic efforts.

This U.S. policy position represents a gross violation of women’s rights and runs counter to the global trend of liberalizing abortion laws worldwide, which has led to significant decreases in unsafe abortions.

Canada cannot be complicit in the rolling-back of the hard-fought gains made over 20 years ago on women’s rights, specifically their sexual and reproductive rights. Together, we call on Canada and all sexual and reproductive rights allies to denounce the enactment of this expanded Global Gag Rule and to make concerted efforts to increase support for safe abortion care as part of a comprehensive package of sexual and reproductive health services, and to champion advocacy related to safeguarding and advancing sexual and reproductive rights locally, nationally and globally.

Signatories:

  • Abortion Access Now PEI
  • Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights
  • AidWatch Canada
  • Asia Pacific Alliance for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (APA)
  • Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women (ARROW)
  • ASTRA Network
  • ASTRA Youth and Federation for Women and Family Planning
  • Canadian Council for International Co-Operation
  • Comité québécois femmes et développement
  • Compass Centre for Sexual Wellness
  • Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung (DSW)
  • Federación de Planificación Familiar Estatal
  • FOKUS – Forum for Women and Development
  • Foundation for Leadership Initiatives (FLI)
  • Inter Pares
  • Island Sexual Health Society
  • International Planned Parenthood Federation – Western Hemisphere Region
  • McLeod Group
  • Margaret Pyke Trust, with the Population & Sustainability Network
  • PEI Abortion Rights Network
  • Planned Parenthood Ottawa
  • Planned Parenthood Toronto
  • Rutgers
  • Sexual and Reproductive Justice Coalition
  • Sexual Health Centre Saskatoon
  • Sexuality Policy Watch (Brazil)
  • Shanti Uganda Society
  • SHORE Centre
  • Simavi
  • Southern African AIDS Trust (SAT)
  • Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR)
  • WISH Associates

To include your organization as a signatory, please write to Sarah Kennell sarah@sexualhealthandrights.ca

Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, 25th January 2017

IPPF: Why we will not sign the Global Gag Rule

On 23 January 2017 President Trump signed an executive order reinstating the Global Gag Rule, or the Mexico City Policy.

The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) believes in the right of every individual to decide about their own health and well-being.  As an organisation that seeks to protect and improve the lives of women, men and children around the world, IPPF and its partners in 170 countries will not sign a policy that denies human rights and puts the lives of women at risk.

The Global Gag Rule denies U.S. funding to organisations like IPPF if they use money from other donors to provide abortion services, counselling or referrals—even if abortion is legal in a country.

It blocks critical funding for health services like contraception, maternal health, and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment for any organisation that refuses to sign it.

When it has been enacted by previous Republican Presidents, evidence has shown that the Global Gag Rule has not reduced the number of abortions; rather, by eliminating access to contraception, it has led to more unintended pregnancies and more unsafe abortions.

IPPF is the largest non-governmental provider of contraception in the world. It has worked with the U.S. government for decades. Our global network of local partners delivers more than 300 services every minute of every day, including 70 million contraceptive services every year.

The Global Gag Rule’s reinstatement will result in additional unintended pregnancies and countless other needless injuries and deaths.

It means IPPF will lose $100 million USD for proven programs that provide comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services for millions of women and youth who otherwise go without these vital services, including women suffering the burden of health and humanitarian crises.

Over the years USAID has been a huge supporter of family planning – with a budget of over $600 million per year. Reinstatement will mean that years of progress to increase access to essential services globally, will be lost.

We cannot—and will not—deny life-saving services to the world’s poorest women.  We will work with governments and donors to bridge the funding and service gaps the Global Gag Rule creates. We will ensure that women can exercise their rights and access safe abortion and family planning.

International Planned Parenthood Federation

Total Abortion Ban Debuts in US Congress

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Thursday introduced the first federal “heartbeat bill” modeled on a failed Ohio attempt to end legal abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy—before many people know they’re pregnant.

“Heartbeat bills” amount to total abortion bans. They have been declared unconstitutional in federal court.

King’s office confirmed that HR 490 marked the first introduction of a so-called heartbeat bill in the U.S. Congress. Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) introduced a forced ultrasound bill in 2011, but her measure did not ban abortion—King’s stated goal.

A King press release called Roe v. Wade unconstitutional, adding that under HR 490, “if a heartbeat is detected, the baby is protected.”

His spokesperson provided Rewire with legislative text specifying that an abortion provider “who knowingly performs an abortion and thereby kills a human fetus” without determining a heartbeat, informing the patient of a heartbeat, or proceeding regardless of a heartbeat would face fines and up to five years in prison. The bill includes limited exceptions for the physical health of the pregnant person but not for “psychological or emotional conditions.”

Read the full article from Rewire

Women in Saudi Arabia want to be full-fledged citizens

Saudi Arabian women have signed a controversial petition to end male guardianship. We are ready to pay the price, Hatoon Als Fassi told DW.

DW: Ms Hatoon Al Fassi, you are one of the famous women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia and a professor for woman’s history at “King Saud University.” Over 14,500 people in Saudi Arabia have signed a petition sent to King Salman calling for an end to the kingdom’s guardianship system, which requires women to have male permission for most of life’s tasks. That is a remarkable number for Saudi Arabia. How could this new collective consciousness develop in very traditional Saudi society?

Hatoon Al Fassi: We cannot tell where this sample of signatories have come from; we need to do another statistical analysis and we don’t have much information. One question was asked, what do you do. But in general and from the social media that keeps the trend of this campaign going every day – today it reached its 95th day – we can say that it comes from middle class women and men, educated and young. Most of the indications go in this direction and with the support of many men.

Hatoon Al Fassi is one of the leading figures of the women’s rights movement in Saudi Arabia

What exactly do you want to change?

With this petition we wanted first to change the status quo that renders Saudi women a “thing” that has no will of its own. The petition is a call to stop and end the system of guardianship for women. This means to stop letting women who are mature and adult to need permission of their guardian (i.e. father, brother, husband, even son) to allow her to study, work, travel, receive a scholarship, be admitted to hospital, undergo an operation related to her own womb, and even to be released from prison after finishing a sentence. This system has nothing to do with religion, however – women were always under the impression that it is so. Our petition and campaign clarified many of these myths as well as showed by proof and evidence that this is a mere patriarchal system that violates women’s human rights.

Is the male dominated society in Saudi Arabia ready for this change?

The conservative society is under the impression that guardianship is religion, so we have seen resistance by many of that community; however, many well-known religious scholars have appeared and spoke out saying that what this campaign is asking for is legitimate and it is true that there is no guardianship on the adult sane mature woman, to name one, Sheikh Abdullah al Menee, member of the Council of Senior Scholars, the highest religious commission in Saudi Arabia that reports to the king directly.

Read the whole interview from Deutsche Welle

The women tweeting for their freedom in Saudi Arabia

“I’m a dead soul in a living body and I hope that doesn’t happen to my little sister,” Sara, a Saudi woman, tells CNN.
Sara is one of a growing number of Saudi women who are challenging the country’s male guardianship system using social media.
In Saudi Arabia, every woman has a male guardian — often a father or husband, sometimes a brother or son — who has the power to make a range of critical decisions on their behalf.
After speaking to dozens of Saudi women, Human Rights Watch found in July that the system is “the most significant impediment to realizing women’s rights in the country.”
Read the full article at CNN.

Iran women bike against female cycling fatwa

A ruling by Iran’s top religious leader banning women from cycling has led to angry social media users posting pictures of themselves riding their bikes in protest of the fatwa.

Iran’s religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has angered women across the country by issuing an edict banning them from riding bicycles.

“Riding [bicycles] often attracts the attention of men and exposes society to corruption, and thus contravenes women’s chastity, and it must be abandoned,” Khamenei said on September 10, according to Iranian state media.

Female cycling enthusiasts regularly face criticism and some have even been attacked or arrested in the past.

Recently, a series of campaigns encouraging people to ride their bikes in order to lower air pollution has caught on in numerous Iranian cities, leading many, both men and women, to cycle more often.

Read the entire article at Deutsche Welle.

Thousands of Saudis sign petition to end male guardianship of women

Thousands of Saudis have signed an online petition calling for the government to abolish the country’s guardianship system, which prevents women from engaging in fundamental tasks without the permission of a male relative.

“Women should be treated as a full citizen,” said activist Aziza Al-Yousef who, along with other activists, has been fighting against the guardianship system for a decade.

“This is not only a women’s issue, this is also putting pressure on normal men … this is not an issue for women only,” she told the Guardian.

Under Saudi law, women require the permission of a male guardian to travel, marry, or exit prison and it may be needed to be granted employment or access to healthcare.

A guardian is typically a woman’s father or her husband if she is married; a widow may have to seek permission from her son if she has no other men of age in her life.

But in recent years, a growing protest movement has sought to end the system. Yousef and other prominent activists started holding workshops and performing studies on the religious validity of the guardianship system five years ago. The campaign picked up steam this summer after Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a blistering report on the system.

Read the full article at The Guardian.

The Islamic Republic’s War on Women

The election of Hassan Rouhani gave new momentum to Iran’s devout Muslim feminists — but the mullahs aren’t having it

By Ziba Mir-Hosseini

The phone calls started about six weeks ago. Men who didn’t introduce themselves, working for Iran’s security agencies, rang the country’s most prominent women’s rights activists and demanded they show up for interrogations.

All the activists were told the same thing: “Don’t tell anyone we’ve called you here. Don’t speak to the media, don’t breathe a word to anyone.” But word seeped out, first in Tehran’s feminist circles and then among political activists, who traded accounts of interrogations and lines of questioning.

The Iranian government’s crackdown on feminists, one of the Islamic Republic’s periodic intimidation campaigns against women’s rights activists, is still underway. But the present iteration isn’t just a push-and-pull struggle between the government and civil society, or between the censors and the country’s most prominent women’s magazine — it’s a proxy battle between the president and the country’s hard-liners.

Iran’s women’s rights activists, both religious and secular, seized the space offered by President Hassan Rouhani’s 2013 election to emerge from the underground and engage again in public life. The Revolutionary Guards and the clerical establishment have responded by charging a vast international “feminist conspiracy” to undermine the Islamic Republic, funded by wealthy Western donors, intellectually articulated by feminist academics based abroad, and conducted by foot soldiers inside Iran — and even inside the president’s cabinet.

Read the rest of the article from Foreign Policy.

Indian court gives women entry to inner sanctum of famous Mumbai mosque

NEW DELHI, Aug 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Women in India have the right to fully access a famous mosque in the city of Mumbai, a top court ruled on Friday, bolstering a nationwide campaign aimed at securing women their religious rights and allowing them entry into all places of worship.

Ruling on a petition filed by Muslim women’s rights activists who demanded entry to the men-only inner sanctum of the Haji Ali Dargah, a Mumbai High Court bench said the restriction violated women’s fundamental right to equality.

“Today the court is ruled in our favour and I am very thankful. It has been a hard fight over many years and we lost momentum as many women were concerned of what society would think of us,” Bibi Khatoon from the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, or Indian Muslim Women’s Movement, told reporters.

To read the full story, visit the Thomson Reuters Foundation News.