Press corner

[Laurence Gilliot]

Friends,

Let us share here all the interesting articles we come accross, related to AIDS Competence.
Please post the title, the source, the hyperlink to the article and if possible a short introduction with the link to AIDS Competence.

Amis,

Partageons ici les articles intéressants, en lien avec la compétence face au sida.
Veuillez poster le titre, la source, le lien vers l'article et si possible une courte introduction qui fait le lien avec la Compétence face au sida.

Laurence

[Rituu B. Nanda]

A message from Mitu Khurana

In honor of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Centre for Social Research will be doing a special demonstration to bring awareness to the serious issue of female foeticide. In the last 20 years, it is estimated that over 10 million girls in India have been lost to female foeticide/selective abortion or infanticide. According to the 2001 census, there are only 933 females for every 1,000 males in Delhi.

On Thursday, 25 November at approximately 15:00, Centre for Social Research along with approximately 50 young women from local colleges will be participating in a peaceful awareness campaign event outside of Vasant Kunj mall complex on Nelson Mandela Marg. The women will be dressed in black, holding signs that read “Future Prime Minister”, “Future Lawyer”, “Future Economist”, etc. to symbolize the girls that have been lost to female foeticide. In addition to the tragic loss of life, female foeticide poses a significant threat to the future of Indian society. Through this demonstration CSR hopes to remind the people of India of the great potential that exists among the women of India. In addition, since female foeticide happens across all sections of society—rich and poor, educated and uneducated– CSR has specifically chosen this location to speak to a targeted group of people who may be uncomfortable speaking about this taboo subject. In addition, CSR also hopes to reach some of young people of Delhi who will eventually become the next generation of parents.

CSR will also be gathering signatures for a petition to call on Indian Health Minister Ghulam Nabi to reconvene the PC &PNDT Committee in order to do a full investigation into the effectiveness of the laws preventing selective abortion. CSR hopes to collect 5,000 signatures by 10 December which is World Human Rights Day.

We at Shadowline Films support the efforts of the Centre for Social Research and the courage of these young women who will be demonstrating on behalf of the innocent. Please join us in showing our support for those in India who are http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/130/706/205/

(http://shadowlinefilms.com/shadowlinefilmsblog/293/international-d.../)

[Jean-Louis Lamboray]

Here is an article from Turkey. Our friend Pak Zahid is quoted extensively.!
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=evaluating-turkey-on-world...

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Dear Friends,

The Nelson Mandela Foundation recently hosted a two-day consultative forum in Johannesburg, South Africa to reflect on the two-year HIV community conversations programme. After the Youth in dialogue series in 2007, community conversations were first introduced in 2008, and employ the Community Capacity Enhancement (CCE) methodology developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help communities identify the main drivers of HIV and brainstorm solutions to the challenges they face.

Ian Campbell from the Constellation supported the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Community Conversations as well as participated at the consultative forum.

Quoting from the report- In his keynote address Ian Campbell, a physician who designed the community counselling aspect of the community capacity enhancement, focused on the capacity that people have for responding to HIV/AIDS. He looked at the format of community conversations and how they naturally take root in communities, harnessing the inherent knowledge and expertise found there. He gave numerous examples of conversations around the world which, once they had been launched, organically extended to other communities, affording others the space to work through common challenges and potential solutions.

Campbell said that local communities should be allowed to continue the conversations process on their own: “Communities have the capacity to relate, have insight and make the change in their lives ... Intervention is necessary at the beginning and then the will of the people needs to be engaged.”

For more information relating to the consultative forum, please take a look at the following article:
http://www.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/news/article/hiv_aids_consul...

I hope that you find this a useful resource.

Regards,

Rituu

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Call for Case Stories: Knowledge Management Impact Challenge

Opportunity type: 

Awards

Opportunity closing date: 

Sunday, January 30, 2011

What are the measures that matter for knowledge management?  Share your story in the KM Impact Challenge!
 
Measuring the impact of knowledge management is a hot topic in international development circles and many of us are trying to find ways to effectively measure and demonstrate the results of our investments in knowledge and learning to understand how these investments help us achieve our development objectives faster, more effectively, more efficiently, and/or with greater impact. We all know that there are no simple answers or one-size-fits-all approaches but there is increasing consensus that we need to work together to address these challenges by asking ourselves difficult questions and exploring the context of emerging solutions. 

The Knowledge Management Impact Challenge, sponsored by USAID and conducted in collaboration with KM4Dev, aims to accelerate this discovery process by creating a space where this dialogue can thrive and we can gather and exchange stories and explore different avenues of what works and what doesn't. Over the coming months we invite you to share how you tackle this challenge, reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the tools used, and compare lessons learned across an international community.

From 1 December 2010 until 30 January 2011 we will be collecting case stories to capture the diversity of practitioner experience in this area.  To get the Challenge moving we are offering an early entry award, with all case stories submitted by 31st December eligible for a US$1 000 professional development grant.  In addition at least five case story authors will receive a travel award to share their experience at the upcoming KM Impact Challenge unConference in Washington, DC.

We know that this is a busy period for everyone but hopefully it is also a time of reflection, as you write your end of year reports think about the types of data and evidence you would like to have at your fingertips and please share your thoughts on this topic with us.  Case stories collected will be featured on the Challenge web site and reviewed by a diverse Technical Advisory Group to help make sense of what’s happening in practice. Discoveries from the review of case stories and pre-existing literature will feed the peer-learning process both online and at the KM Impact Challenge unConference (http://kdid.org/kmic/events/km-impact-challenge-unconference) proposed for March 2011.  .

For more about KM Impact Challenge, refer to: http://kdid.org/kmic.

[Laurence Gilliot]

Arun Hewapathirane shared this article from Nam AIDSMap

 

Implications for future approaches to curing HIV infection:

http://www.aidsmap.com/page/1577949/

 

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Dear All,

 

I would like to draw your attention to an article which I read recently.

 

What’s missing from the DIY aid debate?

The article says that in the developing world, local people with a“combustible mix of indignation and vision” are often already organized and doing something about the issues facing them in their communities, though their initiatives are often ignored and under-resourced. Unfortunately, this is something big aid and those new to international engagement continue to discount and/or overlook......

 

I’ve worked in children and HIV programming in southern Africa for over a decade. What is undeniable to me in this time is that most children are getting by not because of sweeping national-level policy protections or major internationally-funded programs. Rather, those who survive and thrive do so because of the local efforts of people who organize their communities to extend support and services to children in areas not sufficiently reached by government or international agencies........

Read more on: http://www.how-matters.org/2010/11/08/missing-from-diy-aid-debate/

 

Rituu

[Olivia Munoru]

Hi Rituu. I love this. What a beautifully pulled together argument for the international development sector to re-orient itself towards supporting local responses.

In fact, the article has helped me to articulate what I know in my heart is the right way, but was struggling to communicate to others - the "nay sayers" as this writer calls them.

 

Thanks for sharing!

[Laurence Gilliot]

Article shared by Dr. Mitu Khurana

 

WORRISOME SEX-RATIO 
A world without women 
How ironical it is that just when Indians are patting themselves on the back on having the richest man in the world in their midst, when the middle classes are celebrating the rising stock market and more, girls are being killed, women are being bought and they have to fear for their lives in many parts of this country, asks Kalpana Sharma. 
 
22 November 2007 - In the late 1980s, when we had the first indications that technology was being used to ensure that girls were not born, a few people made rather prescient predictions about the future. They predicted that women would face much greater violence. They suggested that women would be trafficked.

These campaigners against sex-selective abortions were condemned as scare-mongerers. They were told they were exaggerating to make a point. Fewer women would mean a greater demand for them. That instead of dowry, women could demand a higher price for marriage.

Realities now

We know now that the opposite has happened. Many of the dire predictions made in the 1980s are coming true. In the states where sex selection is most rampant, there are entire villages where the men cannot find women to marry. So they are 'buying' women from other states. And in some instances, where the family can afford to buy just one woman, she is expected to 'service' all the men in the family.

An increasing number of studies and reports are now revealing that this is happening not just in Punjab and Haryana, the states with the worst sex ratios but also in some districts of Uttar Pradesh. It is possible that such incidents could be occurring in other states as well but have not yet been reported.

The 2001 census was a wake-up call. It exposed the damning Indian reality of falling sex ratios in the 0-6 years age group. The national average stood at 927 girls to 1,000 boys. Since then some efforts have been put in place to implement the law to check sex-selective abortions and to encourage parents with girls. But clearly, so far, the impact of such policies has not made a difference. The Third National Family Health Survey has revealed that five years later, the sex ratio in the age group has fallen to 918.

Meanwhile, according to recent reports, in villages in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, women are being sold as 'wives' for as little as Rs.3,000. Impoverished women from Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and Jharkhand are finding themselves in households where they do not speak the same language as their 'husbands' who have paid for them. They are expected to clean, cook and procreate. Ideally, they should bear boys. If they have girls, they have several reasons to worry. For one, girls in these villages are unwelcome. Second, in villages full of men, many of who cannot find women to marry, girls are unsafe. They cannot be sent out of the house alone. And even within the household, they have to be protected.

In some villages in Punjab, however, all the men in a household have access to the bought bride. She has no choice. Even if she is married to one brother, she must be available to all the other brothers in the house. Thus, polyandry exists, particularly in poor households where only one man can 'buy' a wife. Studies suggest that this is happening in the cotton growing districts of the state. Once prosperous, crop failures have led to an acute economic crisis for many farming families. Suicides have been reported similar to those witnessed in Vidarbha and Andhra Pradesh. Sex selection has ensured that there are too few local women available. And poverty has dictated that only those with money can 'buy' a woman.

Ironies

How ironical it is that just when Indians are patting themselves on the back on having the richest man in the world in their midst, when the middle classes are celebrating the rising stock market, when the media is openly promoting two Bollywood blockbusters as if they were essential news, girls are being killed, women are being bought and girls and women have to fear for their lives in many parts of this country. This reality should cancel out the euphoria. But it barely makes a dent. It touches our consciences for a moment and then recedes.

What should be done? In the states where the trend of eliminating girls has reached its peak, there is a social emergency. It must be tackled on all fronts. It should be a high priority not just for those state governments but also for the country. For, what happens in Punjab, Haryana and UP today could take place in any other part of India tomorrow.

But more than enforcing laws, and making sure they are effective, we have to work harder on the more intangible and deeper problem of prejudice and perceptions. Some believe that we will be a less biased society, and that caste, gender and communal divisions will be flattened out as we become more prosperous. Yet, sex selection has clearly shown that prosperity enhances and deepens inherent prejudices and provides the resources to act upon them. It is no coincidence that the most prosperous districts have the lowest sex ratios.

Changing perceptions

Can the media do anything to change perceptions? To some extent it can, although the reasons for son-preference are complex. A recent survey of advertisements, for instance, revealed that the majority of ads using a popular icon, like a sports personality or a film star to endorse a product, used little boys. These boys were not chosen on the basis of their looks. They had to be 'cute' and 'smart'. On the other hand, when little girls appeared in ads, they had to be pretty. You could not find a dark girl or a plump girl in any ad. Furthermore, most family images comprised man, woman, boy or man, woman, boy and girl. Rarely did you see a family with just one girl, or with two girls.

These are subtle normative messages that sit on top of accepted perceptions and reinforce them. You can never prove this because it is imperceptible. But if we have to change perceptions, or at least believe we should, then a deliberate attempt has to be made not to reflect popular perceptions but to try and alter them in some way. âŠ•

Kalpana Sharma 
22 Nov 2007

Kalpana Sharma has been Chief of the Mumbai Bureau and Deputy Editor with The Hindu. Her opinions, which appear in a regular column with The Hindu, are concurrently published on India Together with permission.

URL for this article: 
http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/nov/ksh-sexratio.htm

[Laurence Gilliot]

Article shared by Dr. Mitu Khurana

 

A WORLD WITHOUT WOMEN 

“Push Mr. Sharma push! Open up your shaft! Let the baby come out!” It would be a maternity ward no more, but a paternity ward where a man would give birth to his son. He would feed him out of his own breast, cook for him, walk him to school and be his world. He would have to become amother, socially as well as biologically, because soon we will have no women left for the job. Men cannot give birth, but leave that to the scientists. I am sure they will come up with something. They would have to, because at the rate at which female feticide is occurring, we will soon have no womenleft in the world!

Instead of men marrying a number of women, as is common in the Middle East, women will now have to marry many men, throughout the world. The Draupadi style of marriage will be back with aaresult of shortage of women. Gay marriages will have to be legalized as there would be no females left to marry, and the dipping male to female sex ratio will continue to throw more such appalling scenes in our faces, till the day females become an endangered specie. vengeance. Many men will have to share one wife as

Ever wondered why we have such a situation in the first place? It is because of our preference for amale child, an offspring we can depend upon in old age, enjoy dowry acquired from his marriage and live off his earnings. It is because of these reasons that female fetuses are aborted, infant baby girls are left to die in bins. And this is why unfair treatment is meted out to young girls, such as not being allowed to study and married off at an early age. Even though an increasing number of boys are choosing not to stay with their parents and at times not supporting them financially as well, people’s mindsets have not changed about the girl child and the entire situation.

But what when we have no women? Brothers will have no sisters, fathers will have no daughters, boys will have no girlfriends and children will have no mothers. There would be no Raksha Bandhan, no Bhaiya Dooj, and Valentine’s Day and Karva Chuath will see men gifting or fasting for their boyfriends and husbands. There would be cases not of rape but only of sodomy. The few women left in the society will be protected like diamonds. And most likely be auctioned at biddings, and sold off to the person who pays the highest price for the sole female in the land.

We need not even go as far as the near future too see this, as already there are villages in Rajasthan and Punjab devoid of any girl child. The soon-to-become-extinct female race needs to be valued and treasured, not be discarded and left to die. The world would be lifeless without women. A woman is amother, a homemaker, a sister, a friend – all rolled into one. We abort one fetus, we kill all of these in one go.

Shalini Rajvanshi

 

source- http://theviewspaper.net/a-world-without-women/ 

[Jean-Louis Lamboray]

Belcompétence a adopté cette phrase: "Pour vivre mieux, vivons ensemble autrement".

Autrement, par rapport à l'argent, à la nature, à autrui!

Ce webdocu du journal Le Soir explique très bien la transition nécessaire du PIB vers le BNB (Bonheur National Brut)

http://blog.lesoir.be/bonheurbrut/le-webdocumentaire/

Sorry, the documentary is only in French!

JL

[Olivia Munoru]

This is a fantastic idea Laurence. I am looking forward to seeing the stories that are posted up here over time!

[Laurence Gilliot]

UNAIDS representative blasts HIV 'Swat analyses' programmes

 

Article in the Kaieteur News on Ruben del Prado