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BUENOS AIRES, Sep 17 2012 (IPS) – The Argentine government has opened legal aid centres in slum neighbourhoods, to provide a range of services, from assistance for immigrants and victims of domestic violence to dental care services.

“Many of the situations can be solved by picking up the telephone,” said Ariel Pereira, coordinator of the centre that is operating in Villa 1-11-14, a shantytown on the south side of Buenos Aires.

People living in the neighbourhood seek help from the centre in applying for pensions or identity documents, and filling out paperwork in the case of immigrants. They also file reports of domestic violence and application forms for social assistance payments or exemption from taxes or fees for certain services.

“In our centre, the people who come for help are mostly foreigners and battered women,” Pereira told IPS.
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In both cases, the obstacle that leads them to turn to the centre is the police themselves, who often pay no attention to reports of domestic violence, considering them minor incidents, or simply because of discrimination.

To apply for residency in Argentina, immigrants, mainly from Bolivia and Paraguay, need to show proof of address, which has to be issued by the federal police after they verify where the applicant lives.

But “since this is a ‘villa’ (slum), the police don’t come here, and people get desperate because their appointment date is coming up (in the immigration office) and they don’t have the proof of address,” he said.

In such cases, the legal aid centre takes a hand in the matter, to get the police to issue the necessary document.

In the case of domestic violence victims, the police do not take down the women’s complaints, “sending them instead to the courts in the centre of the city, which makes things difficult for the women,” he said.

The legal aid centres, by contrast, offer the women support from lawyers, social assistants and psychologists, who inform them of their rights and, in case they file a legal complaint, help them every step of the way.

Of the total number of people who turn to the legal aid centres for help, 63 percent are women and 45 percent are foreigners of either sex.

Applying for a certificate of poverty

Some 15 people were waiting in line for assistance when IPS visited one of the legal aid centres set up in Villa 31, a long-time slum in the central neighbourhood of Retiro.

Three public employees are on duty from 10 AM to 4 PM every day in the legal aid centre, which is just two by six metres in size. It is next to a Catholic church in this poor neighbourhood which according to the 2009 census was home to just over 26,000 people, 51 percent of whom were from neighbouring countries, mainly Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru, and 20 percent of whom from Argentina’s provinces.

IPS randomly interviewed seven of those waiting in line, and found that they were all immigrants who had come to apply for a “certificate of poverty” – the name given to the document they need to be exempted from a 300 peso (65 dollar) fee for applying for an Argentine identity card.

Also waiting in line were people seeking other documents, or people who wanted to talk to the lawyer, like Sandra, a 31-year-old Peruvian woman who needed legal aid for obtaining custody of her daughter.

“Her father doesn’t give me money, and I know he’s here (in Argentina),” said Sandra, who wants to visit her two other children who are living with a relative in Peru. But in order to take her seven-year-old daughter with her on the trip, she needs authorisation from the father, who has not shown up.

Mediators

The first five legal aid centres were created in 2008 in Buenos Aires. These pilot centres found the need for offering a wider range of services. Another 33 were gradually opened, several of them in the provinces, Florencia Carignano, the head of the National Office for the Promotion and Strengthening of Access to Justice, told IPS.

“There are economic, social, cultural and geographic barriers standing in the way of everyone having access to the same rights. For that reason, rather than sporadic interventions, what we are seeking at the centre is to provide a stable state presence,” she said.

Once it was clear what kinds of assistance would be sought in the centres, Carignano’s office, which is under the Justice Ministry, signed cooperation agreements with other ministries and public offices, as well as with universities and foreign consulates.

In some cases, these different institutions supply their own staff to the legal aid centres where their services are needed.

“The paperwork of foreigners is often bogged down in their countries of origin,” Carignano said. “In these cases, we set up mobile units. Consuls come to take note of the needs, and in 15 days they come back with the papers.”

The centres also act as mediators, and they raise awareness – through pamphlets and conferences on new laws that expand rights, for example, in the areas of immigration, mental health or domestic violence

The Justice Ministry’s office of Social Readaptation, which helps ex-convicts rejoin society, also has representatives in the centres.

In addition, young people from the Labour Ministry’s “More and Better Jobs” programme work as administrative employees at some of the centres. These youngsters are completing their secondary school studies and seeking to join the labour market.

The elderly seek help at the centres in applying for a pension, exemption from taxes or fees, or benefits to which they are entitled by law, but which they do not know how to claim. One example is the right to receive a free digital TV converter box.

Under an agreement with the Health Ministry, the centres also provide vaccines or dental care when there is no nearby public clinic offering such services.

According to a study by the National Office for the Promotion and Strengthening of Access to Justice, the legal aid centres have provided assistance in more than 152,000 cases since they were created.

Because the centres were overwhelmed by the number of people seeking help, nine mobile units were added this year, which go from neighbourhood to neighbourhood in Buenos Aires. These mobile legal clinics demonstrate the success of the programme and how important it is for the justice system to reach out to those who are claiming their rights.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 26 2012 (IPS) – As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) limp towards their target date of 2015, the United Nations is shifting its focus to another long-term action plan: a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Indigenous baby and mother in Chihuahua, Mexico. Social movements want indigenous rights and gender equity included in the concept of sustainable development. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS

A follow-up to a decision taken at the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development last June, the will be a list of post-2015 development and environmental goals touted as a logical successor to the eight MDGs adopted by the General Assembly back in 2000.

The 193-member General Assembly has been mandated to appoint a still-to-be-named Working Group of about 30 countries as part of an intergovernmental process which will be entrusted with the task of articulating a list of post-2015 SDGs.

The recommendations of this group will eventually be integrated with that of a High Level Panel (HLP) of Eminent Persons comprising Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (chair), Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

The HLP plans a meeting in London on Nov. 1, to be followed by a dialogue with civil society on Nov. 2. The latter event is scheduled to be live-streamed on www.worldwewant2015.org.

Meena Raman, legal advisor to the Penang-based Third World Network and an active participant in the Rio+20 summit, told IPS that any post-2015 development agenda should be based on an analysis of the factors that hinder or threaten development in developing countries.

Just having a set of goals and targets, as was the case in the initial approach to MDGs, is clearly inadequate, she noted.

The eight MDGs include the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary education; empowerment of women; reduction of child mortality and improvement of maternal health; eradication of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; environmental sustainability; and a global partnership for development.

But most developing nations are expected to miss some or most of these goals by 2015.

Raman said there is a need to spell out international factors that undermine development in developing countries, such as the unstable and speculative-based financial system which has distorted the global economy; the unfair trading system, including free trade agreements that are skewed against the global South; and an investment system that has unfair investor-State dispute mechanisms (allowing companies to sue governments for important measures governments take to protect the public interest).

Additionally, she said, there is an intellectual property system that hinders technology transfers and raises costs of essentials.

All these are worsened by the global economic crisis which will overwhelm development prospects, Raman predicted.

Asked if the SDGs will focus more on the environment and sustainable development (as the name implies) or on enhanced MDGs, Manish Bapna, managing director of World Resources Institute, told IPS there are currently two tracks.
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But, ultimately, these tracks should converge into one framework that incorporates sustainability, without losing the importance of reducing global poverty and improving human well-being.

The proposals on the table are incredibly wide-ranging, including topics like biodiversity, oceans, sustainable cities, and changing consumption patterns; and proposals for MDG-like goals focused on poverty, health, education, and gender, he added.

There are also numerous groups advocating for the addition of a particular theme, such as peace, the private sector, and climate rights.

The challenge will be to create goals that are few in number, focused, and simple, he said.

While tough choices need to be made, prioritisation of the goals will be essential for their success, said Bapna, who participated in last week s U.N. Special Event Panel on Conceptualizing a Set of Sustainable Development Goals, which took place before an audience of senior policymakers and U.N. ambassadors and delegates.

Asked if the SDG process will be any different from the MDG process, Raman of the Third World Network, told IPS, The SDGs should cover all three pillars of economic, social and environment in a balanced manner and not just focus on one pillar like the environment over the other two pillars.

It is important to have a holistic approach in developing the goals, and not just focus on the goals, but also address how to implement them, including the means of implementation, she added.

Raman also pointed out that the development of the SDGs should be guided by the Rio+20 outcome document.

She said all the existing shortcomings must be addressed and corrected as a prime approach to the new U.N. development agenda.

There is a need for economic production to take place in developing countries which is supported by and not hindered by global factors like destabilising finance, unfair trade and overly strict intellectual property regimes.

She said incomes and jobs, complemented by good social policies, should be the focus of development policies, and this should be enabled and not hindered.

Goals and targets alone cannot be sufficient, Raman said.

Asked about inputs from civil society, she pointed that this is what the Rio+20 outcome document also recommends.

This must be followed through, and efforts must especially be made to ensure the participation of civil society from developing countries, she added.

Asked about the participation of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), Bapna said, We believe that the process will be open, bringing in perspectives from NGOs, civil society and more.

He said WRI is currently working with a diverse group of civil society organisations to provide input and we intend to be deeply engaged going forward .

We recognise that an inclusive, consultative process that engages the global poor and historically disenfranchised is crucial for achieving the goals that emerge, Bapna said.

This is particularly true, he said, compared to 20 years ago because the international aid landscape is much more complicated.

Clinique de Confiance was the first clinic in Côte d’Ivoire to begin targeting men who have sex with men. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

ABIDJAN , Dec 1 2012 (IPS) – When Emmanuel Kokou, a 28-year-old sex worker, moved from his native Togo to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in 2010, he knew there was a good chance that he had previously been exposed to HIV. But he had no intention of getting tested.

“I had done a lot of silly things,” said Kokou, whose name has been changed to protect his identity. “But I never got a test because I was afraid.”

That changed only after he visited Clinique de Confiance, a compact one-story facility tucked behind an unassuming blue gate in an upscale section of this West African nation’s economic capital. The test came back positive, and since then Kokou has learned how to manage his health and avoid transmitting HIV to others – namely, by insisting his clients wear condoms.

“If the clinic wasn’t here I wouldn’t have had the courage to do this,” he told IPS, referring to the process of learning his status and how to live with it. “There are people here who give us advice and reassure us.”
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Clinique de Confiance was the first clinic in Côte d’Ivoire to begin targeting men who have sex with men (MSM), starting in 2004 with sex workers and their partners before expanding to all MSM in 2007. Although two other clinics offering similar services have opened recently, Clinique de Confiance remains by far the most established.

As such, the clinic has played a critical role in Côte d’Ivoire’s bid to lower the adult HIV prevalence rate, one of the highest in West Africa. Staff members estimate that roughly 1,000 MSM have visited the clinic over the years – only a portion of the total population (for which there are no good estimates), but still a significant achievement.

Activists warn, however, that unless something is done about the heavy stigmatisation that MSM face in Ivorian society – especially those who are HIV positive – it will be difficult to build on progress the clinic has made so far.

Unlike regional neighbours such as Liberia and Nigeria, where the issue of homosexuality has been highly politicised and lesbian gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) populations have recently been targeted by harsh anti-gay legislation, Côte d’Ivoire does not have a reputation for persecuting MSM. A report broadcast by a Dutch radio outlet last year went so far as to declare that Abidjan was “becoming a gay Eldorado.”

Yet Dr. Camille Anoma, coordinator of the NGO that runs Clinique de Confiance, said discrimination against MSM – at home, at school, at work, in health centres and out on the streets – is common. He noted that no other health facilities were even trying to serve the MSM population before Clinique de Confiance started in 2004.

“Before that, the focus of our activity was female sex workers,” Anoma told IPS. “But the staff at the clinic kept seeing commercial sex workers who were men having sex with men. Our question was, ‘What is the situation of MSM in this country?’ And nobody seemed to know. That’s the reason why we decided to offer services for this group.”

Though the available data is limited, it is clear that HIV prevalence rates are considerably higher for MSM than the general population. , estimates that the national adult prevalence rate was three percent in 2011. Internal numbers from Clinique de Confiance show that figure was 24.5 percent for MSM in 2009.

Claver N. Toure, executive director of the LGBT group Alternative Côte d’Ivoire, said the situation would be far worse without Clinique de Confiance and the two other clinics that welcome MSM. “It would be a catastrophe,” he told IPS. “The MSM are obligated to get their treatment and their prevention from these clinics because they’re not going to the general hospitals,” where they may be treated with derision.

There are a number of factors preventing Clinique de Confiance from expanding its reach, including logistical challenges such as transport costs. But Morley Bienvenu Nangone, head of monitoring and evaluation for Arc-En-Ciel Plus, a group that combats HIV/AIDS and homophobia, said the most formidable challenges were cultural.

He said the stigma associated with homosexuality prevents many men from acknowledging even to themselves that they are gay, making it far less likely that they will seek out HIV prevention and treatment resources. “What needs to be done for health is not just to focus on health, because health problems are linked to socio-cultural problems,” Nangone told IPS.

Nangone said that is why it was essential that Clinique de Confiance maintain a low profile. “If it wasn’t confidential, if there were large signs outside, then it wouldn’t work as well,” he said.

The experience of Kokou, the Togolese sex worker, underscores just how pervasive the stigma can be. He said that even though he had come to terms with his sexuality and his HIV-status, he kept both a secret for fear of how others would react.

“I don’t share my status because people will see me differently,” he said. “You’re seen badly, and people don’t trust you. I haven’t told anybody, not even a friend, not my dad or my mom. Nobody knows outside of the clinic.”

He went on: “As for being open as a gay person, I don’t even know how that would work. I just don’t go out. I just don’t have very many friends.”

SAN SALVADOR, Feb 1 2013 (IPS) – After years of delays and obstacles, a law regulating the pharmaceutical market has come into effect in El Salvador, giving its people access to medicines at more reasonable prices, with discounts of over 50 percent for some drugs sold in high volumes, like diabetes medication.

The Medicines Law is a major step forward for health rights in El Salvador, Margarita Posada, the head of the Salvadoran Association of Community Health Promoters and one of the first activists to present in 2002 a bill to limit the abusive practices of drug manufacturers and retailers, told IPS.

In early January, the Dirección Nacional de Medicamentos (DNM, National Directorate of Medicines), newly created by the law, published maximum retail prices for 4,406 medicines that are on average 35 percent lower than before.
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Within this list of named medicines, the drugs with the highest volumes of sales and the highest costs had their prices slashed by an average of 69 percent, good news for consumers who for decades have been paying high prices fixed by an under-regulated industry which has been accused by social organisations of committing marketing abuses.

For instance, the DNM list shows that a medicine for treating high cholesterol, previously sold at 68 dollars, will now cost 37 dollars, and another for diabetes, formerly 23 dollars, will cost 10.73 dollars. (These are chronic conditions, so savings over a year are substantial.)

The price control measures apply only to prescribed medicines, not to over-the-counter preparations, according to the law that was approved in February 2012, but only came into effect Dec. 29 when the executive branch provided it with the necessary regulations to translate it into policies.

Pharmacies have until Apr. 1 to adopt and display the new prices established by the DNM rules.

The World Health Organisation recommends that medicines should not be priced at over five times the international reference price (IRP), but in this country that multiple has been exceeded many times over, according to studies carried out by the state University of El Salvador.

Of course, there have been abuses on the part of the pharmaceutical industry, said Posada. The same medicine for treating high blood pressure costs the equivalent of four dollars in Ecuador, but 17 dollars in El Salvador.

The prices on the DNM list were arrived at by comparison with the cost of medicines in the rest of Central America and with IRP listings. A new list of around 7,000 products with significantly lower new prices will be issued in February.

In (two) months time, all these products must be labelled with the maximum retail price, the head of DNM, José Vicente Coto, told IPS.

As these prices are announced, the pharmaceutical sector remains as hostile as when the legislation was first being debated.

Pharmacy owners, the final link in the chain that has to absorb the price changes, met in December with DNM officials for clarification of the scope of the new regulations. But the meeting turned into a forum for the business owners to voice their collective disagreement with the enforcement of the law.

They say they will lose out because, in two months time, they will not be allowed to sell products they bought under the old price regime at their original cost.

There is no doubt that we will suffer losses. We cannot lower prices just because the law says so, said Ricardo Iglesias, the owner of La Divina Providencia pharmacy in Chalatenango, in the north of the country.

In general, the pharmacy owners complained that the regulations are forcing them to change their prices, but not the pharmaceutical laboratories that produce the medicines, nor the distributors or middlemen.

The DNM director told them that the law only regulates the retail price, but obviously it is expected that the whole production chain will have to adapt to the new rules, including the laboratories and the distributors.

Meanwhile, the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Industry Association of El Salvador (INQUIFAR), which represents the laboratories, said the sector will not survive with the prices set by the law.

Carmen Estela Pérez, the executive director of INQUIFAR, said they have identified a large set of medicines that they will not be able to sell because the prices fixed by the regulations are below the cost of production.

The prices we have seen (on the list) are non-viable, Pérez told a television channel. She underlined that 7,000 direct jobs and 110 million dollars a year from pharmaceutical exports are at stake.

In October 2012 the Supreme Court agreed to try the case of a constitutional challenge from a private citizen against some of the articles in the Medicines Law. This represents the pharmaceutical industry s last card in its bid to have the legislation, and the price cuts, repealed.

Pérez hinted that the law, promoted by the parliamentary bench of the governing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), might be an attempt to displace national industry in favour of ALBA Médica (Medical ALBA), an initiative she says aims to follow in the footsteps of ALBA Petróleos, an oil company that is a joint venture between FMLN mayors and the Venezuelan government.

Everything related to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) is a source of severe irritation among conservative sectors in El Salvador, due to the close relationship between leaders of the FMLN, a former guerrilla group, and the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez and his 20th Century Socialism, which promotes this alliance of Latin American governments.

Political analyst Kirio Waldo Salgado said in a television interview that if ALBA Médica enters the market, there is no need for alarm, because that is what the free market, loudly advocated in El Salvador, is all about.

There are many demands on a communal water tap in the Lord Howe Settlement in Honiara in the Solomon Islands. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS.

HONIARA, Solomon Islands, Apr 8 2013 (IPS) – The Solomon Islands, a developing island nation in the south-west Pacific Islands, has one of the highest urbanisation rates in the region, and the basic service infrastructure is struggling to cater for the influx of people from the provinces to the capital, Honiara. Thirty-five percent of the city’s population, who live in informal settlements, are facing the health consequences of a dire shortage of clean water and sanitation.

Located on the main island of Guadalcanal, Honiara is a coastal city and port of 64,600 people growing at 2.7 percent a year. Thirty informal settlements in the capital are home to more than 22,500 people. Many have come for economic opportunities and better access to public services, while others were displaced during the ‘Tensions’ (1999-2003), a civil conflict between communities over access to land and resources on Guadalcanal.

Households throughout Honiara experience shortages of clean water for cooking, drinking and washing on a daily basis. But in the informal settlements a household survey has revealed that 92 percent do not have any water supply to their homes, 27 percent use communal stand taps and 20 percent collect water from wells, rivers and streams.

Sanitation coverage in the Solomon Islands is 32 percent, according to the Solomon Islands Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Sector Brief (WASH), while the regional average is 46 percent. In the urban settlements of Honiara, only 2 percent of people have access to flush toilets, 20 percent use pit toilets and 55 percent use the sea, river or nearby land.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) population growth is one factor impacting the availability of fresh water in many Pacific Island nations, as it is in the Solomon Islands.

But much of the water supply and sanitation infrastructure in Honiara was seriously damaged during the ‘Tensions’ and, since then, development funding has prioritised peace and reconciliation, law and justice, governance and economic development.

A spokesperson for the Solomon Islands Water Authority (SIWA), which is responsible for the urban water supply, explained to IPS that the “current (water supply) network is not able to supply the water demand due to pipe restrictions and the limited and aged pipe network cannot meet the demand of the rapidly expanding population in Honiara.”  Thus regular water shortages result when “rationing of water has to be implemented to ensure that everyone has access to water.”

However, in squatter settlements most people live without piped water.

Water for washing and bathing is from the well,” Alison, a resident of Henderson Settlement, home to 3,000 people on the urban outskirts told IPS. “But we have to go far to look for our water for drinking and cooking. We just look for where people have tanks and then ask them if they will allow us to use some of their tank water.”

Lord Howe Settlement, situated adjacent to the city centre, comprises several hundred migrants from the Polynesian island Ontong Java in the eastern Solomon Islands.

The community has access to one communal tap for every three to four families which provides town supplied water during certain hours of the day,” Father Muliava, the local pastor said. “But there are days when the tap is dry and there is no water. We store water in plastic containers and try and manage the supply.”

The state of sanitation is equally critical. “There are about three houses here which have proper sanitation, but most people use the nearby beach, even though it is not safe to use at night,” Father Muliava said.

At Henderson, Ruth and her husband have access to a pit toilet. But she told IPS:  “We cannot use the toilet during the day. It is an open toilet and the other families sit around, so there is no privacy.”

One outcome is regular cases of dysentery, diarrhoea and cholera. According to UNEP, 10 percent of all fatalities of children under five years throughout the Pacific Islands are caused by diarrhoea related diseases. In the Solomon Islands it is 8 percent.

At Henderson, Alison recounted: “I was admitted recently to hospital after I suffered a miscarriage. I didn’t use proper water and developed an infection and became ill. The doctor said I need access to clean water.”

“My little child has skin rashes all over her body from the water,” she added.

Water and sanitation deprivation has also been linked to violence against women, according to a 2011 Amnesty International report.

Women and girls are vulnerable to rape and sexual harassment when they have no option but to walk considerable distances unaccompanied, in some cases round trips of three to six kilometres per day to collect water, use water sources for bathing or when there are only exposed places available for sanitation purposes.

The government introduced a national policy to combat violence against women in 2010. But gender violence remains a concern with the Solomon Islands Family Health and Safety Study confirming that 64 percent of women aged 15-49 years, who have been in relationships, experience some form of domestic abuse.

“If there is no water available, men harass women because it is the role of the woman to go and find water,” Ruth said.

One of the main challenges facing water resource management in Pacific Island nations is limited technical, resource and governance capacity to address complex infrastructure challenges and implement development strategies.

A current project being conducted in collaboration with the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) is creating 16 new bore holes which will lead to a future increase in the city’s water supply capacity.

The Honiara City Council only provides services to communities that fall within the city’s boundary, but has a long-term strategy to eventually incorporate many of the informal settlements into its urban plan. A spokesperson told IPS that the council had constrained resources, but was subsidising the manufacture of latrines, which are available to people in Honiara and the settlements at reduced cost, monitoring sanitation usage and implementing community awareness of sanitation and health issues.

A spokesperson for local women’s organisation, Vois Blong Mere (Voice of Women), commented that the problems faced by women in the settlements will only diminish when basic services are improved, emphasising that women must be empowered to be involved in the decisions made about the health and safety issues impacting their lives.

Women and children from the village where the Esparza family was murdered by soldiers in Mexico’s “drug war” demand justice outside the schoolhouse.Mónica González /IPS

WASHINGTON, May 25 2013 (IPS) – Following the release of a major draft report on drug policy in the Americas, the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza, called for the beginning of debate aimed at reforming those policies throughout the region.

“Delivering this report today,” Insulza said Wednesday, “we are encouraged by the sincere aspiration, which I now have the privilege of presenting to the entire hemisphere, that this is not a conclusion but only the beginning of a long-awaited discussion.””A one-size-fits-all response won’t work for complex problems that affect different countries in various ways.” — John Walsh of WOLA

The draft report was shared with the 35 member countries of the OAS and is now scheduled to be discussed in depth at the upcoming organisation’s general assembly, on Jun. 4 in Guatemala.

The call for a new debate comes in light of a strengthened resolve on the issue throughout the region. This relates to the violence associated with drug trafficking as seen along the U.S.- Mexico border, as well as an increased prevalence of drug use and growing demand for health care services to treat addictions.

While acknowledging shortcomings in the implementation of current policies, some countries are continuing to defend the overall approach, and are encouraging a plan of action adopted by the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) branch of the Washington-based OAS. This approach calls for the continued concentration of efforts to reduce both supply and demand, as well as measures in line with United Nations conventions on drug law.

The new OAS discussion will inevitably be energised by the recent surprise legalisation of marijuana in two U.S. states in November.

“A one-size-fits-all response won’t work for complex problems that affect different countries in various ways,” John Walsh, a senior associate with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), an advocacy group here, told IPS.
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“The report points to the need for flexibility to pursue options that may imply national and international reforms, including legal and regulated cannabis markets. And it emphasises that this more open debate is really just now beginning.”

Many of the region’s leaders have expressed frustration with the limits and exorbitant costs of current policies and their desire for a fuller and more creative debate.

But according to Walsh, who participated in writing the OAS report, there is a lot of scepticism over whether the OAS will be up to the task, especially given U.S. domination of the issue. But he also emphasises that the new report represents a good first step in the direction of a more constructive and nuanced debate.

“Drug policy is an international issue as well as a domestic issue and it can be hard to separate them, especially when you’re talking about drugs trafficking across borders – if it’s an issue in Colorado, chances are it is related to the issue in Mexico,” Walsh, who released a on this issue earlier this week, told IPS.

“In the case of cannabis in particular, the U.S. has been the chief advocate for international drug conventions that place strict controls on cannabis. However, as the U.S. begins to revisit and alter its cannabis laws, this will certainly have an effect on how the drug conventions are seen within the U.S. – and, and in turn, in Latin America, because all countries in the Americas are signatories of the same treaties.”

The OAS draft report even explores the potential creation of legal and regulated markets that would reflect these changes taking place in the United States.

“Changing U.S. public opinion towards cannabis is being reflected in changes in state policy, which has already placed the U.S. at odds with the drug conventions,” Walsh notes. “And while some of the Latin American states might be feeling a bit puzzled by the U.S.’s new approach to drug policy, others are seeing an opportunity to have similar proposals.”

Yet significant differences remain in public attitudes on this issue outside the United States. Walsh suggests that while public opinion has led government policy in this county, governments would need to lead public opinion towards legalisation in many Latin American countries.

Cannabis disconnect

Following the November elections here, a looming disconnect has opened up between where the United States seems to be going on cannabis policy and how the U.S. is asking other countries in the region to act. This is most evident in the case of Mexico, with Washington continuing to push the Mexican government to use its security institutions to forcefully crack down on the illicit cross-border drug trade.

For the moment, it appears unlikely that this policy will change. Yet some analysts say they are already seeing a fundamental shift in this dynamic, with Latin American governments taking the lead for the first time, in trying to define drug policies in the region.

Depending on how it proceeds at the meeting on Jun. 4, the new OAS report could be a central component of this shift. Beyond the cannabis issue, for instance, the OAS report offers a range of proposals and alternatives to be considered which, if adopted, would dramatically change the way drug policies are implemented.

This is happening after years in which the U.S. government was able to largely dictate such policy. Very recently, however, Latin American countries have been examining the drugs problems they’re dealing with on an individual level – and to decide on the most appropriate policy responses.

“Most of the considerations of new cannabis policy involve examining the potential to separate the cannabis market from the wider black market for illicit drugs,” Colletta Youngers, a long-time Latin American drugs expert with WOLA, told IPS.

“This is both to protect the people who want to obtain cannabis from having to go into criminal markets, and also to the extent that cannabis is a big part of illicit drug revenues that are for now entirely in criminal hands and to put those revenues into the hands and control of the state.”

Still, she admits that for the time being the issue of legal, regulated cannabis markets is a priority for some U.S. states, but not yet for the national government. But Youngers also points to countries such as Uruguay – where such a law is currently pending – and others that are currently exploring such issues.

In June, New York state legislature will vote on a bill that will increase protection for sex trafficking victims. Credit: Bigstock

NEW YORK, Jun 13 2013 (IPS) – It started for Ruth when she was 12 years old and for Lowyal when she was 13. After being raped by her mother s boyfriend, Ruth ran away from home and was picked up by a pimp, who sold her into prostitution.

Lowyal, bullied at school and facing a deteriorating situation at home, dropped out of school and eventually began working on the streets. In a drawing Lowyal created to depict this traumatic time in her life, a wide eye reflects a city skyline as red flames curl at the bottom, with menacing faces on both sides.

This month, New York s legislature will vote on the New York Trafficking Victims and Protection and Justice Act (TVPJA), which would give more protection to girls like Ruth and Lowyal, and harsher punishments for those who trafficked them. It is part of the Women s Equality Act that supporters hope will be voted on before the legislative session ends Jun. 20.

, an international human rights organisation, is working with the and the to get the law passed.

The organisation is encouraging supporters to send letters to Governor Andrew Cuomo, Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, and State Senator Dean G. Skelos.

The TVPJA will direct resources to toughening laws to target and arrest pimps and buyers rather than victims. And under the new law, penalties for buying sex from a minor will be similar to those for statutory rape.

The law would also mean that all prostituted persons under the age of 18 are treated as trafficking victims instead of criminals in the state of New York. Currently, 16- and 17-year-olds arrested for prostitution are prosecuted as adults.

There are two provisions that we are having a hard time with and [are] getting opposition to, Lauren Hersh, New York director of Equality Now, told IPS. Hersh is perplexed as to why these provisions are problematic.”Sex trafficking is happening within New York City, and many of its victims are American-born.”
— Lauren Hersh

The first is making sex trafficking a violent felony in New York State, which would send a message to law enforcement that trafficking is a violent crime, Hersh explained.

Talk to any sex trafficking victim, and they ll tell you how violent it is, she added.

The second is aligning New York state law with U.S. federal law, which does not require prosecutors to prove that minors were coerced into sexual acts. Under the current law, with most cases in New York, victims have to testify in court, Hersh said.

The New York State assembly is historically against raising penalties, Emily Amick, staff attorney at and legislative director for the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition, told IPS.

The law needs to evolve, Amick said. Albany is letting politics get in the way of helping people, she added, with state lawmakers who oppose these provisions working against the livelihoods and futures of sex trafficking victims.

Despite some opposition, Hersh sees the bill as excellent and comprehensive .

The fact that women and girls are being trafficked not only inside U.S. borders, but also within city limits, may be a surprise to some people, Hersh said.

When people think of sex trafficking, they often only think of women and girls being smuggled across international borders. But sex trafficking is happening within New York City, and many of its victims are American-born, Hersh said in a statement.
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Legislative justice is one part of the solution. Sexually exploited girls like Ruth and Lowyal should also be given a voice in the process of advocacy and justice, Hersh said. Project IMPACT, a New York-based programme that allows trafficking victims to share their stories, if and how they choose to, is one way to do so.

I think telling my story matters because it could help other girls like me, Veronica, another formerly trafficked girl, said, after sharing her story at Project IMPACT. Storytelling is important because I lived this – I m the one who knows what it s really like.

Ruth, Lowyal and Veronica are part of Gateways, a residential treatment program for commercially sexually exploited youth that is run by the Jewish Child Care Association and allows them to rebuild their lives and self-esteem. Some Gateways residents visited Albany in May to lobby for the bill s passing.

Reliable statistics on sex trafficking are difficult to obtain due to the hidden and underground nature of the crime, according to Hersh, but a 2010 State Department report put the number of people trafficked to the United States each year at around 15,000.

Two million children are exploited each year in the international commercial sex trade, according to 2012 data from the International Labour Organisation, which also estimates that women and girls make up 98 percent of sex trafficking victims.

And in the United States, while little data is available for the number of victims, the FBI estimates that 293,000 American children and teenagers are at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation.

The only way we re going to have justice in New York is to pass this bill in its entirety, Hersh told IPS.

GMOs are steadily advancing in Brazil, where transgenic crop varieties produced by multinational corporations grow alongside others developed nationally.

Field of soy in Não-Me-Toque, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. Credit: Nilson Konrad/IPS

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 30 2013 (IPS) – Ten years ago, Brazil yielded to agribusiness pressure and legalised the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) soy. Today it is the world’s second leading producer of GM crops, surpassed only by the United States.

Transgenic soy had been grown clandestinely in Brazil since the second half of the 1990s.

In 2003, the adoption of Decree 4680, which stipulated the labelling of foods with a genetically modified organism (GMO) content of at least one percent, was considered a landmark decision.

But the most definitive step in this direction was taken by the administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) through its authorisation of GM soy through successive “provisional measures”, which temporarily allowed the legal sale of crops that were being illegally grown in the south of the country with GM seeds smuggled in from Argentina.

Finally, in 2005, the adoption of the Biosafety Law established the National Technical Commission on Biosafety (CTNBio), which is responsible for assessing and approving or rejecting applications for the cultivation and sale of GMOs.
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Two years later, another law created the National Biotechnology Commission to coordinate and implement a general policy on biotechnological development.

Plant diseases, pests and invasive species are the main causes of financial losses in agriculture, especially due to the difficulty of monitoring and controlling them, according to agricultural engineer João Sebastião Araújo, from the Department of Agronomy at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro.

“In this context, in 1996 a new technology was introduced, transgenesis, with a variety of maize that contained proteins derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt),” providing the maize with the bacterium’s insecticidal properties, Araújo told Tierramérica.

“It became one of the most commonly used technologies in agriculture in the United States, and quickly came to account for the majority of maize crops grown in that country,” he added.

The emergence of this technology was followed by a new escalation in the use of fertilisers, new crop varieties, agricultural machinery and the introduction of entomotoxic (insecticidal) molecules, “all aimed at achieving bigger crop yields,” said Araújo.

This new technological package was then promoted by transnational corporations in countries like Brazil, which is viewed as “an exceptional market” due to its vast areas of soy, maize and cotton plantations, he explained.

As a result, considerable pressure was exerted by these corporations to gain government authorisation for the use of transgenics, with the promise of greater efficiency and lower costs.

According to Céleres, a consulting firm that specialises in the agribusiness sector, GM crops occupied 37.1 million hectares of land in Brazil during the 2012-2013 agricultural year, which reflects an increase of 14 percent (4.6 million hectares) over the previous year.

The leading GM crop is soy, with 24.4 million hectares planted in 2012, accounting for 88.8 percent of total soy production.

GM varieties accounted for 87.9 percent (6.9 million hectares) of the harvest. As for the summer maize crop, transgenic varieties cover 5.3 million hectares, or 64.8 percent of the total area planted.

Meanwhile, GM cotton makes up just over 50 percent (547,000 hectares) of the crops planned for the 2012-2013 agricultural year, according to Céleres.

Araújo noted that Brazil is highly competent in agricultural research and that its scientists have achieved “exceptional results” and contributed to crop yields that were unimaginable in the past.

However, despite the technological advances made, there are still insufficient answers for a number of concerns about GM crops, he said.

“Caution is needed so as not to use this technology without the necessary discretion. Today, Europe is convinced that its impacts go much further. We are talking about a very recent technique. In Brazil it dates back only 10 years, in Europe, 13 years, and in the United States, 17 years,” he added.

Maurício Lopes, president of the government agricultural research agency, EMBRAPA, emphasised another aspect.

The tropics are the world’s most challenging region for agriculture, due to the impacts of climate change and the need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions generated by this human activity, he said.

“We need to make use of the entire technological arsenal available to us. We believe that modern biotechnology, nanotechnology, new sciences and new paradigms are important. Brazil cannot say no to these techniques, because the current challenges are enormous,” Lopes told Tierramérica.

Lopes believes that the results of these past 10 years have been positive overall, but that it is important to make intelligent, planned and careful use of these new tools.

“We are in favour of transgenesis. We understand that there is a framework of methods and procedures for using it safely,” he noted. At the same time, however, he is critical of the fact that biotechnology remains under the control of a handful of global actors, such as agrifood corporations.

EMBRAPA is currently working on the development of new varieties of beans, tomatoes and papayas.

“We are testing a that is resistant to a terrible disease, known as bean golden mosaic virus, which is transmitted by an insect. This product has already been developed by EMBRAPA and we are now testing it,” said Lopes.

The next frontier will be vegetables. Brazilian scientists have already obtained a modified lettuce that contains large concentrations of folic acid.

“Folic acid is a key component in the diet of pregnant women, because of its importance for the nervous system development of the foetus. We are testing it and it will have to pass a long battery of tests. But it is a product which might be on our tables in the future,” he said.

While the proponents of GMOs claim that they can be a tool to combat hunger and reduce the use of herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and micro-fertilisers, environmentalists warn of the risks they pose for agricultural biodiversity.

The environmental organisation Greenpeace says the release of GMOs into the environment can lead to the loss of plants and seeds that constitute the world’s genetic heritage.

“We defend a model of agriculture that is based on agricultural biodiversity and does not use toxic products, because we understand that this is the only way we will have agriculture forever,” says a Greenpeace statement.

Moreover, the group stresses, there is no consensus in the scientific community regarding the safety of GMOs for human health and the environment.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

This article is the second of a two-part series exploring disability’s place in international development guidelines. In part one, IPS looked at the repercussions of ignoring disability on an international level. Part two asks: was the lack of attention simply an oversight or due in part to the complex nature of disability?

The media and public perception play a role in how different conditions are treated and how the disabled view themselves. Credit: Bigstock

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 2013 (IPS) – When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened a recent high-level meeting on disability and development that promised a place for the issue in the post-2015 agenda, he cited three examples of incapacity.

All three were stories of children or adolescents, even though the World Health Organisation estimates nearly 200 million adults have a functional difficulty.When aid is “solutionist”, it only looks for problems where data lies, like the drunk who searches for his keys under a streetlamp and not where he dropped them.

Ban s comments illustrate what many see as a key difficulty in representing disability, both in language and in the democratic decision-making process.

Activists say the lack of attention at the international level is not simply an oversight but a product of a confused conception of disability and the unique experiences of different groups of disabled people.

The reality, they argue, is that certain classes of disabled people coincide more easily with the orientation of international guidelines for healthcare intervention and with public understanding of health.

A dominant assumption in interventions is that “we save people because when we save them they are going to have a full life and produce a lot, so society benefits,” said Bruce Jennings, director of bioethics at the Centre for Humans and Nature and a lecturer at Yale University.

Saving lives means a country will have a more reliable workforce, a guarantee of vital importance in places like Sub-Saharan Africa where populations have been ravaged by HIV/AIDS.

But a focus on mortality puts those with severe and cognitive disabilities in a precarious limbo.

“What is the rationale for spending a great deal of resources for supporting the quality of life of people with severe cognitive problems when the usual answer our society gives for spending resources in healthcare is future productivity?” Jennings told IPS.

In developing countries, where 80 percent of the world’s disabled live, social integration and sustained healthcare for them can be financially unpalatable to governments when set alongside well-subsidised international measures that focus on vaccines for polio or cutting edge treatments for AIDS.
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Programmes that focus on pharmaceutical solutions are seen as easier to account for in cost-benefit terms.

But for the disabled, there is often no pill to end their distress or help overcome social barriers. For severe cases, years of rehabilitation and attention from public sector healthcare are required.

“It’s a difficult subject to bring up,” said Antony Duttine, rehabilitation advisor at Handicap International.

“It’s perceived as quite costly to provide care and support but equally it’s a moral and legal issue that you have to look into.”

Whose voice?

As is true for many activists, those with first-hand experience of disability are often the clearest voices for progress.

“We need to include people with disabilities not just as the beneficiaries but the participants,” said MP Reen Kachere, minister of disability and elderly affairs in Malawi.

Participation is especially important in developing countries, said Kachere, where international projects have to navigate the historical question of paternalism.

“The disability advocacy community has very much been oriented towards inclusiveness and participation of individuals with impairments in the decision-making processes,” Jennings said.

A common refrain among advocates is “nothing decided for us without us.”

But participation raises the question of representation, he said.

“I’m not sure someone who has experience living in a wheelchair is a good representative for someone with cognitive impairments,” noted Jennings.

Because of how varied conditions are, differences arise in how integrated the disabled feel in society.

“It is relatively easier for a person who is blind or a person with physical disability to access services, but there is much more stigma attached to cognitive disabilities,” said Gopal Mitra, a programme specialist for children with disabilities at UNICEF.

“Disability is not a homogeneous group,” he told IPS.

The media and public perception play a role in how different conditions are treated and how the disabled view themselves.

In the United States, victims who lost limbs when bombs went off at the Apr. 15 Boston marathon . At the same time, more than 50,000 U.S. diabetes patients undergo lower extremity amputations each year. Worldwide, someone loses a leg to diabetes every 30 seconds. All of them will require lifetime care.

Images of children or victims of a tragedy are easier to digest for the public than those whose descent into incapacity is slow or genetic. Physical disabilities are easier to understand than mental ones, and as a result societies are more likely to allocate money to that which they can comprehend, said Jennings.

“There is an image of the disabled as being physically limited and cognitively sound,” he said. “By having the public have a person in a wheelchair be the paradigm of disability in their mind and thinking that we deal with disability if we have wide doors and lifts on public buses is an unfortunate mistake.

Even as organisations catch up with contemporary theory on the fluidity of gender and sexual orientation or the vastness of the disability spectrum, their efforts can still be constrained.

The problem, as disability activists see it, comes in large part from the total lack of language concerning the disabled in U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The result can be a self-perpetuating cycle.

“Countries are not tracking and reporting progress on children and adults with disabilities as far as MDG achievements are concerned,” said Mitra. “Countries are not connecting data. Unless you have numbers, it is difficult to plan or allocate resources.

“However, the point is 15 percent of the world’s population is people with disability. If you don’t include this 15 percent no development goals can be achieved.

At its worst, say critics, when international aid is “solutionist , it only looks for problems where data lies, like the drunk who searches for his keys under a streetlamp and not where he dropped them. And disability is notoriously hard to define and track.

Though an understanding of the different forms of disability may allow society to better help, the ultimate solution may be the idea of a common shared experience.

“I think the rational is solidarity, empathy, dignity, mutuality, equality and respect,” says Jennings. “It’s very hard to put a metric on those.”

In Swaziland, which has been hard-hit by the AIDS pandemic, an HIV-positive mother sits next to her 18-month-old baby girl. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

WASHINGTON, Dec 3 2013 (IPS) – The gap in health standards between the world’s poorest countries and the more advanced middle-income nations could close by the year 2035, according to a major new report published Tuesday by Britain’s The Lancet medical journal.

Written by a group of 25 of the world’s top global-health experts and international economists, makes the case for the international community, governments and key donors, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to increase investments in health to meet the target.

“Now, for the first time in human history, we are on the verge of being able to achieve a milestone for humanity: eliminating major health inequalities, particularly inequalities in maternal and child health, so that every person on earth has an equal chance at a healthy and productive life,” according to Harvard University professor and former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers.

“The powerful drugs and vaccines now available make reaching this milestone affordable. It is our generation’s unique opportunity to invest in making this vision real,” said Summers, who 20 years oversaw the preparation of the only ‘World Development Report’ (WDR) devoted to global health when he served as the World Bank’s chief economist.
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The 58-page report, which calls for government policymakers to adopt a new approach to measuring the importance of health to their national economies, is being published as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – a unique multilateral agency that has approved 29 billion dollars in grants since its founding in 2002 – is meeting here this week to gain new donor commitments for its fourth three-year replenishment.

The three diseases are among the biggest health challenges faced by the world’s poorest countries and poorest people in middle-income nations.

The Fund’s leadership got a big lift here Monday when, at a World AIDS Day ceremony, President Barack Obama pledged continued U.S. support for the Fund, promising to provide one dollar for every two dollars committed by other donors over the next three years, up to a total of five billion dollars.

Bill Gates also announced that his foundation – the single biggest private funder of global health initiatives will provide up to 500 million dollars through 2016, including 300 million dollars that was previously committed and up to 200 million dollars in new matching grants.

“Don’t leave our money on the table,” Obama said, speaking to many of the delegates who have gathered here for the pledging conference. “Now is the time to replenish the Global Fund.”

The Fund’s new executive director, Mark Dybul, said he was confident that this week’s pledging would significantly exceed the 9.2 billion dollars that was committed at the last replenishment in 2010.

The Lancet report offers what it calls a “roadmap to achieving dramatic gains in global health through a grand convergence around infectious, child and maternal mortality; major reductions in the incidence and consequences of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and injuries; and the promise of ‘pro-poor’ universal health coverage.”

If followed, the roadmap could result in averting some 10 million deaths across the target countries in 2035 alone, according to the report.

It points to the experience of the “4C countries” – Chile, China, Costa Rica, and Cuba as models for poor and lower-middle-income countries. All four started off at similar levels of income and mortality as today’s poor countries but, by 2011, had become among the best-performing middle-income nations.

Among the specific goals, according to the report, are reducing under-five mortality to 16 per 1,000 livebirths, and reducing annual AIDS-caused and TB-caused deaths to eight and four per 100,000, respectively.

To achieve these and other aims, the report calls for “aggressively scaling up” efforts to fight HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria as well as improve maternal- and child-health conditions which were a major focus of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); strengthening health systems to focus on the most problematic sectors, including poor rural sub-populations of middle-income countries that are disproportionately affected by infectious diseases; and devoting more and earlier investment to family planning.

In addition, government should be encouraged to pursue fiscal policies – notably by heavily taxing tobacco and other harmful substances, such as alcohol, that can sharply reduce NCDs and injuries, as well as leverage significant new revenue for low- and middle-income countries that can, in turn be used to reduce subsidies on items, such as fossil fuels that produce air pollution which in turn cause NCDs.

Such savings will provide most countries with enough funds to finance many of the steps urged in the report. It thus urges that, while donor countries, which hopefully will include emerging economies, should increase their investment into research and development to produce new drugs, vaccines, and other health technologies.

The report calls for at least a doubling in health R D from current annual spending of around three billion dollars to six billion dollars by 2020, with half of the increment coming from middle-income countries.

The report argues that the economic returns from investments in health are “much greater” than policy-makers have previously assumed.

The 1993 WDR found considerable evidence that improvements in health increased gross domestic product (GDP) per capita by enhancing childhood educational advances and adult worker productivity, as well as increasing access to natural resources and foreign investment that are encouraged by controlling diseases like malaria.

But the GDP analysis, the Lancet report asserts, measures only the impact of health improvements on economic productivity. It fails to capture the intrinsic value people place on their own improved health, including their greater life expectancy.

A full-income approach combines growth in national income with the value of additional life years (VLY). The report estimates that, on average, across low- and middle-income countries, one VLY – a one-year increase in life-expectancy – is about 2.3 times greater than per capita income.

Using that approach, the report found that, between 2000 and 2011, 24 percent of the growth in full income in those countries resulted from health improvements; that is, in VLYs gained. By the same token, setbacks to life expectancy, such as in countries hit hard by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, resulted in a far greater adverse impact than the impact on GDP per capita would suggest.

“We believe that if nations worldwide adopt a full-income approach to economic planning, the human returns to investing in health can be brought into resource allocation decisions,” said Dean Jamison, a University of Washington professor who co-chaired the Commission with Summers.

“People value a longer and healthier life, and the notion of full income simply places that value in monetary terms. While it does not put a monetary value on an individual’s life, it does place a value on changing mortality risk, which traditional notions of GDP neglect,” he added.