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ASEAN: End discrimination against women to improve maternal health
ASEAN must take urgent action if all of its member states are to meet targets under the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) for addressing poor sexual and reproductive health for women and girls, Amnesty International said today in a new briefing paper.
The publication Making the fair choice: Key steps to improve maternal health in ASEAN, based on case studies in Indonesia and the Philippines, comes as ASEAN's Intergovernmental Human Rights Commission meets in Manila to discuss how to improve maternal health in the 10-nation region.
WASHINGTON
ASEAN must take urgent action if all of its member states are to meet targets under the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) for addressing poor sexual and reproductive health for women and girls, Amnesty International said today in a new briefing paper.
The publication Making the fair choice: Key steps to improve maternal health in ASEAN, based on case studies in Indonesia and the Philippines, comes as ASEAN's Intergovernmental Human Rights Commission meets in Manila to discuss how to improve maternal health in the 10-nation region.
"It is very disappointing that some ASEAN countries are at risk of failing to meet pledges on maternal mortality which they committed to just a year ago," said Aurora Parong, Director of Amnesty International Philippines.
"This is an opportunity for ASEAN to ensure none of its member states lag behind where women's lives are concerned. Globally, one of the clearest manifestations of discrimination against women and girls is the high number of preventable maternal deaths."
Amnesty International called on ASEAN states to remove barriers to women and girls' sexual and reproductive health which put their lives at risk, in particular discriminatory laws and policies, and attitudes and practices amongst health workers.
In 2010, ASEAN states pledged to provide improved access to sexual and reproductive health services and safe family planning methods.
The Philippines is unlikely to meet its MDG target of reducing maternal mortality from 94 to 52 per 100,000 live births by 2015. Access to contraception is limited, and "natural", unreliable family planning methods, including withdrawal, are publicly encouraged over other methods.
For every 100,000 live births in Indonesia, 228 women lose their lives. The Indonesian government admitted in 2010 that it would not achieve its MDG target of reducing maternal mortality to 102 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2015.
In Indonesia, access to sexual and reproductive health services is severely restricted in law and practice. Many contraceptive procedures or treatments require a husband's permission, which denies access for unmarried women and girls' altogether, and restricts it for married ones.
Abortion is criminalized in most cases in Indonesia and in all circumstances in the Philippines.
"It is appalling that women face so many obstacles to exercising their rights. Limiting access to contraception leads to unwanted pregnancies and contributes to tens of thousands of cases of clandestine and unsafe abortions, which pose the gravest risk to women's health," said Aurora Parong.
The Philippine government is currently discussing a Reproductive Health bill, first tabled in 1999, which aims to improve information and access to sexual, reproductive and maternal health services. It also commits to prioritising access to healthcare for women and children living in poverty.
"The time for talk and empty policy declarations is over. Countries across ASEAN must commit to not only enacting, but implementing legislation." said Aurora Parong.
"They must review discriminatory laws and policies, and educate health workers and communities to effect a change in attitudes towards women and girls.
Only then can we begin to see real improvement in maternal mortality rates and in women's sexual and reproductive health across ASEAN."
Background
Please click here for the briefing https://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA03/001/2011/en ">Making the fair choice: Key steps to improve maternal health in ASEAN
Making the fair choice: Key steps to improve maternal health in ASEAN is a briefing based on Amnesty International's research as part of a worldwide campaign to Demand Dignity, within which maternal health and sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls feature prominently.
In 2010, Amnesty International published the report Left without a choice: Barriers to reproductive health in Indonesia. The report highlights multiple barriers faced by women and girls to enjoying their sexual and reproductive rights in Indonesia.
Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all. Our supporters are outraged by human rights abuses but inspired by hope for a better world - so we work to improve human rights through campaigning and international solidarity. We have more than 2.2 million members and subscribers in more than 150 countries and regions and we coordinate this support to act for justice on a wide range of issues.
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'Granholm You Are Killing Me': Climate Activists Disrupt Speech by Biden Energy Secretary
At a talk by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, activists said that private security guards and Politico staff "brutalized" the demonstrators in their efforts to remove them.
May 19, 2023
A coalition of climate activists from CodePink, Climate Defiance, Climate First!, and Stop the Money Pipeline disrupted two talks at the Politico Energy Summit at Washington D.C.'s Schuyler event space Thursday, calling out corporate greenwashing and the Biden administration's approval of destructive fossil fuel projects.
At a talk by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, protesters rushed the stage chanting, "No MVP, no LNG, Granholm you are killing me." Private security guards and Politico staff "brutalized" the demonstrators, the activists said, choking some, body slamming others, and dragging one woman out by her hair.
"We heard the first eight minutes of the conversation with Granholm," Jay Waxse of Climate Defiance told Common Dreams. "From the beginning she was justifying the need for new pipelines, like the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Especially with her background in clean energy policy, these fossil fuel projects she and the Biden administration are greenlighting are especially horrible."
\u201cUPDATE: we sparked a peaceful mutiny at a speech by U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.\n\nThey choked us and body slammed us and put us in grave danger. \n\nBut we will keep coming back. They can brutalize our bodies. They cannot brutalize our ideas.\n\u201d— Climate Defiance (@Climate Defiance) 1684465259
President Joe Biden and his administration have disappointed climate campaigners for failing to uphold a campaign promise not to approve any more oil and gas drilling on federal lands. Despite this pledge, Biden actually approved more drilling during his first two years in office than did former President Donald Trump.
In particular, the activists targeted Granholm over two projects: the Alaska LNG Project and the MVP.
The Department of Energy signed off on the Alaska LNG Project in April, despite the fact that its own environmental impact statement found that the project—which would export as many as 20 million metric tons of fracked gas overseas starting in 2030—would spew 2.7 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over its lifetime—10 times more than the Biden-approvedWillow project.
"This carbon bomb would lock in billions of tons of pollution and cause severe harm to Alaska's arctic wilderness," Waxse said in a statement. "It's completely unacceptable."
Also in April, Granholm sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) affirming the Biden administration's support for the MVP that would carry fossil gas through Virginia and West Virginia.
"We've been treated as a sacrifice zone for so long that I'm absolutely fed up."
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\u201cSpeaking outside the energy summit, activists with @ClimateDefiance discuss their protest today, criticizing Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm\u2019s support for the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Biden Administration\u2019s approval of oil and gas projects\u201d— Brendan Gutenschwager (@Brendan Gutenschwager) 1684445882
Granholm's talk began at around 4:25 pm ET, Waxse told Common Dreams. The first question Politico asked Granhom was about how she justified her approval of the MVP, but Waxse and Haught said in the video interview that her answer was not satisfying and that Politico did not challenge it.
In general, Haught criticized the way the media has framed the response to the Biden administration's sign off on fossil fuel projects.
Reports will say, "'Biden's ticked off some environmentalists,'" she explained, "when really they should be saying that Biden is currently harming the futures of all of us, not just the environmentalists."
The activists disrupted the talk at 4:34 pm, Waxse told Common Dreams. There were 15 activists in the room, including those filming, before security acted quickly to remove them.
"They ripped us out super quick," Haught said in the video interview, adding that she was so agitated by the response that she threw up in the parking lot afterward.
Climate Defiance documented security's aggression in a Twitter thread.
"The militarized response was unlike anything we've ever seen. A Black man was told 'we can shoot you, like you do each other,' the group wrote. "A woman had her neck mashed to the ground."
\u201cURGENT: we found a picture of the woman who mashed our organizer\u2019s neck into the wood floor. We have reason to believe she may be a \u201cjournalist.\u201d Share widely. We need people to see her face. We need her actions to be known. She needs to be banned from her \u201cprofession.\u201d\u201d— Climate Defiance (@Climate Defiance) 1684505356
Climate Defiance said protesters were carted out by their feet, "one misstep away from a catastrophic injury."
The aggression toward the protesters carried over into racial profiling against other summit attendees.
"Black people who didn't even come as part of our group were summarily turned away. One was assaulted by a private security force—told the event was 'full' as white people in suits were allowed to stream in, unquestioned. Three unaffiliated Black women were kicked out," Climate Defiance tweeted.
The group criticized Politico for the violence of its response, as well as for taking money from utilities TC Energy—the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline—and Southern Company to fund the summit.
German media company Axel Springer—which has been known to compromise journalistic ethics to support right-wing talking points—purchased Politico in 2021, as Foreign Policy reported.
"Cancel you[r] subscription to politico. They hosted the event. They militarized it. They took money from utilities to pay for it," Climate Defiance tweeted.
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\u201c#BREAKING: We just disrupted @Politico Energy Summit: Congratulations @ValCookSmith for getting @Citibank - a major climate destroyer - on a sustainability panel about climate solutions! #StoptheMoneyPipeline #POLITICOEnergy\u201d— Stop the Money Pipeline (@Stop the Money Pipeline) 1684435587
Citi is the second-greatest funder of fossil fuels in the world, according to Banking on Climate Chaos. While the bank has set emissions reductions targets for 2030 and 2050, it has not detailed how it will work with high-emitting clients to meet them, the Sierra Clubnoted in March.
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Hunt, who represents the 8th District and announced earlier this month that she was leaving the Democratic Party to become nonpartisan, addressed her fellow lawmakers after a debate that stretched into the night on Tuesday regarding a proposal to attach an abortion ban to the so-called "Let Them Grow Act" (L.B. 574), the ban on transgender healthcare for youths.
The officially nonpartisan unicameral body—in which Republicans hold 32 seats and Democrats hold 16—ultimately voted in favor of attaching the bill, and Speaker John Arch confirmed to NBC News affiliate WOWT that lawmakers could vote on final passage as soon as Friday.
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Hunt, whose son is transgender, expressed empathy for Linehan over her missed family event, but pointed out that remaining in the Legislature to stop the passage of L.B. 574 is a matter of "taking care of my family."
\u201cNE State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan (R) complains filibusters of anti-trans bills made her miss her grandson's preschool graduation.\n\nSen. Megan Hunt (I): \u201cYou won't come off this bill that hurts my [trans] son. You hate him more than you love your own family. That's why you're here."\u201d— Heartland Signal (@Heartland Signal) 1684441711
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The Washington Postreported Friday that the finance ministers of G7 nations have privately asked U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for "updates on the status of negotiations between the White House and House Republicans" as officials from the rich countries gather in Hiroshima for their annual summit.
Finance ministers have also voiced their concerns publicly. German finance chief Christian Lindner said last week that he hopes "an adult decision will be made with regard to the development of American government finances and the associated effects on the global economy."
Kazuo Ueda, governor of the Bank of Japan, cautioned that a U.S. default could become a "big problem" that the Federal Reserve "may not be able to counteract."
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Citing one Latin America expert, the Post noted Friday that "a debt ceiling like the one that exists in the U.S. stirred debate" in Brazil, where the Lula government is aiming to loosen existing restraints on government spending.
The idea of imposing a strict debt limit "was shot down vehemently, thanks to the U.S. example," the Post reported.
"We are an example to the world," Stephanie Kelton, an American economist, wrote on Twitter. "An example of what not to do."
\u201cWe are an example to the world. An example of what not to do. https://t.co/K4ISWXTgkI\u201d— Stephanie Kelton (@Stephanie Kelton) 1684507808
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Progressives and legal scholars have long argued that the debt limit, first imposed by Congress in 1917, is unconstitutional and should be abolished—an argument that the National Association of Government Employees makes in a lawsuit filed in federal court 10 days ago.
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