March, 29 2016, 03:15pm EDT
Peruvian Government Publicly Recognizes Human Rights Violations Against Rape Survivor As Part of Landmark U.N. Abortion Case
The Peruvian government publicly acknowledged the human rights violations suffered by L.C., a rape survivor who was denied a medically-necessary abortion, as part of a historic United Nations (U.N.) ruling.
Peru's Minister of Justice, Aldo Alejandro Vasquez Rios, admitted the government's failure to guarantee L.C.'s right to access legal abortion services at a convening today with health officials and civil society organizations, including the Center for Reproductive Rights and PROMSEX. In 2011, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) condemned Peru for violating L.C.'s human rights and recommended that Peru amend its law to allow abortion in cases of rape; ensure the availability of those abortion services; and guarantee access to abortion services when a woman's life or health is in danger--circumstances under which abortion is already legal in the country.
The Center and PROMSEX brought L.C. v. Peru to CEDAW and negotiated the reparations agreement with the Peruvian government. This decision marks the third time in history that an international human rights body held a government accountable for failing to ensure access to legal abortion services. The Peruvian government was also held accountable by the Human Rights Committee in 2005 for failing to guarantee access to abortion to K.L., a woman who was forced to continue with a pregnancy that put her physical and mental health at risk, and recently provided her reparations.
Said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights:
"Denying any woman or girl her legal right to abortion services is callus, cruel and a grave violation of her human rights.
"L.C.'s suffering pushed her to the brink of nearly committing suicide, and even then the hospital, and her own government, decided her health and life didn't matter.
"Today, the Peruvian government continues to demonstrate its willingness to right the wrongs inflicted on women across the country who have been denied safe and legal abortion services. Peru must now take the crucial steps to clarify and implement its safe abortion guidelines and improve access to critical reproductive health services for all women and girls."
In 2007, L.C. became pregnant at the age of 13 after being repeatedly raped by a male neighbor. She attempted suicide by jumping off a neighbor's roof, suffering a severe spinal injury that required immediate surgery. Despite Peruvian laws permitting abortion when a woman's health or life is at risk, doctors refused to operate on L.C. because it could pose a threat to her pregnancy. L.C. ultimately miscarried, but the medical care came too late--leaving her quadriplegic. Four years later, CEDAW issued its groundbreaking ruling demanding that the state protect women's health and human rights by changing its abortion law and ensuring women's access to legal abortion services.
"By acknowledging its failure to provide L.C. with the medical care she needed and deserved, Peru must now right these wrongs with long-term support services to L.C. and increased access to legal abortion services for all who need it--including decriminalizing abortion for rape survivors," said Susana Chavez, Executive Director of PROMSEX.
Human rights bodies within the United Nations have consistently condemned the denial of access to legal abortion services in Peru. In 2005, the U.N. Human Rights Committee ruled in favor of a 17-year-old who was forced to carry to term a pregnancy with a fetal impairment incompatible with life, setting groundbreaking precedent recognizing that denying access to legal abortion violates women's human rights. The U.N. Committee declared Peru responsible for violating K.L.'s human rights and ordered the state to provide individual reparations to K.L. and implement general measures to ensure that women can access safe and legal abortion services in Peru. The ruling specifically establishes violations of the rights to be free from cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment and privacy, as well as special protection of the rights of a minor.
Since both the L.C. and K.L. rulings, the Peruvian government has taken some steps to implement these U.N. decisions. In 2014, the government adopted national guidelines for providing safe abortion services that provide clarity for physicians and patients on legal abortion in the country.
And in February 2016, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child released its findings on Peru, explicitly recommending the decriminalization of abortion in all circumstances, as well as post abortion care services in all cases. The committee called on the state to ensure access to safe abortion at minimum in cases of rape, incest, and severe fetal impairments, as well as when girls' lives or health are at risk. The committee also noted that "the views of pregnant girls should always be heard and respected in abortion decisions" and called for Peru to provide "clear guidance to health practitioners and information to adolescents on safe abortion and post-abortion care."
Unsafe abortion is one of the five main causes of pregnancy-related death in Peru. And according to the Guttmacher Institute, about 760,000 women in Latin America and the Caribbean are hospitalized annually for complications due to unsafe abortion.
The Center for Reproductive Rights is a global human rights organization of lawyers and advocates who ensure reproductive rights are protected in law as fundamental human rights for the dignity, equality, health, and well-being of every person.
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UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the "urgent need" for Israel to "de-escalate violence on all fronts."
Dec 12, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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Sanders Says 'Political Movement,' Not Murder, Is the Path to Medicare for All
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," he said. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together."
Dec 12, 2024
Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
"The reason we have not joined virtually every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right is the political power and financial power of the insurance industry and drug companies," he told Jacobin. "It will take a political revolution in this country to get Congress to say, 'You know what, we're here to represent ordinary people, to provide quality care to ordinary people as a human right,' and not to worry about the profits of insurance and drug companies."
Asked about Thompson's alleged killer—26-year-old Luigi Mangione, whose reported manifesto railed against the nation's expensive healthcare system and low life expectancy—Sanders said: "You don't kill people. It's abhorrent. I condemn it wholeheartedly. It was a terrible act. But what it did show online is that many, many people are furious at the health insurance companies who make huge profits denying them and their families the healthcare that they desperately need."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system," he continued, noting the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year because they can't get to a doctor.
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
The 83-year-old Vermonter, who was just reelected to what he says is likely his last six-year term, is an Independent but caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He has urged the Democratic Party to recognize why some working-class voters have abandoned it since Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress last month. A refusal to take on insurance and drug companies and overhaul the healthcare system, he argues, is one reason.
Sanders—one of the few members of Congress who regularly talks about Medicare for All—isn't alone in suggesting that unsympathetic responses to Thompson's murder can be explained by a privatized healthcare system that fails so many people.
In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
Two other Medicare for All advocates, Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), also made clear to Business Insider that they oppose Thompson's murder but understand some of the responses to it.
"Of course, we don't want to see the chaos that vigilantism presents," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We also don't want to see the extreme suffering that millions of Americans confront when your life changes overnight from a horrific diagnosis, and people are led to just some of the worst, not just health events, but the worst financial events of their and their family's lives."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
"Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far," she continued. "This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the healthcare to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone."
After facing some criticism for those comments, Warren added Wednesday: "Violence is never the answer. Period... I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder."
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Reports Target Israeli Army for 'Unprecedented Massacre' of Gaza Journalists
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of Reporters Without Borders.
Dec 12, 2024
Reports released this week from two organizations that advocate for journalists underscore just how deadly Gaza has become for media workers.
Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
The organization has also filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court "for war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists," according to the roundup, which includes stats from January 1 through December 1.
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF, in the introduction to the report. Since October 2023, 145 journalists have been killed in Gaza, "including at least 35 who were very likely targeted or killed while working."
Bruttin added that "many of these reporters were clearly identifiable as journalists and protected by this status, yet they were shot or killed in Israeli strikes that blatantly disregarded international law. This was compounded by a deliberate media blackout and a block on foreign journalists entering the strip."
When counting the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army since October 2023 in both Gaza and Lebanon, the tally comes to 155—"an unprecedented massacre," according to the roundup.
Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
IFJ lists out each of the slain journalists in its 139 count, which includes the journalist Hamza Al-Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael Al-Dahdouh, who was killed with journalist Mustafa Thuraya when Israeli forces targeted their car while they were in northern Rafah in January 2024.
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