Showing posts from category gender.
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Yemen: Population, Environment, and Security Collide
›September 14, 2010 // By Schuyler NullThe Middle East is home to some of the fastest growing, most resource-scarce, and conflict-affected countries in the world. New Security Beat’s “Middle East at the Crossroads” series takes a look at the most challenging population, health, environment, and security issues facing the region.
Yemen is one of the most kinetic intersections of human and environmental security in the world. At the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, it is a natural gateway for those fleeing hardship in the conflict-wracked Horn of Africa, but observers are concerned it may soon resemble something much less than a haven.
Increased local resistance to a corrupt regime in Sanaa and an influx of Al Qaeda influence recently caused the CIA to reassess the franchise in Yemen as a more urgent threat to national security than the core Al Qaeda elements in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In addition to these traditional security challenges, Yemen faces a bevy of population and environment-related problems. With its 22.8 million people, Yemen is growing faster than any other country in the Middle East – by 2050, it will rival Spain in total population. It is home to nearly a million impoverished migrants from East Africa, is almost totally reliant on groundwater that is being drained faster than can naturally be replenished, has an unemployment rate approaching 40 percent, the lowest rating in the world for gender equity, and almost no source of income besides oil exports, which have declined 56 percent since 2001 and are expected to continue sliding, barring any major new discoveries.
Beyond its more covert commitments, the United States has pledged over $210 million to Yemen for military, economic, and development assistance for this year alone. Is it enough to stave off collapse in one of the Middle East’s most troubled states?
For more see The New Security Beat’s full feature, “Demographics, Depleted Resources, and Al Qaeda Inflame Tensions in Yemen,” published earlier this summer.
Sources: Associated Press, Association for the Study of Peak Oil – USA, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington Post.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Old Town Sanaa – Yemen 53,” courtesy of flickr user Richard Messenger. -
GMHC 2010: Lessons Learned & Recommendations
›Over the last three days, 700 technical experts have provided solutions to decrease maternal mortality. In the last year, governments have committed billions of dollars to implement such solutions. Yet, we’ve been here before, reminded Sigrun Mogedal of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the final plenary session of the Global Maternal Health Conference. “Just look at ICPD, Beijing, and CEDAW. Obviously, there must be something wrong with accountability,” she said, since 15 years later women continue to die every minute giving birth.
Wrapping up the conference with a discussion of accountability makes sense – we need to learn from the past and close the gap between commitments made and real action on the ground. So what does today’s buzzword, “accountability,” mean, and how do we enforce the realization of commitments made…or lack thereof?
“Accountability is power, and includes transparency, answerability, and enforceability,” said Lynn Freedman of Columbia University. Through international law, budget transparency, and grassroots mobilization it is possible to ensure that policies make a difference to improve women’s lives.
A review of the Ministry of Finance’s allocation for health can tell us a lot about the government’s real commitment to eradicating maternal mortality. As the overarching instrument of policy the “budget is inextricably linked to development and exists for those who have less,” said Helena Hofbauer of the International Budget Project. “If there were greater transparency of government spending, we could have done more to push for change five years ago,” said Hofbauer. This is indeed true; however, it is also true that if governments simply followed through on the international agreements they are signatories to, women would be better protected.
Accountability through the legal system is possible and Nancy Northrup of the Center for Reproductive Rights demonstrated how international law has overhauled programs and sparked governments into action. For example, in India, the high court recently ruled that the government must execute audits and report back on the steps taken to align programs with policies that ensure a woman’s right to skilled birth attendance.
In order to bring about such judicial interventions a social movement must first be in place to build awareness and demand accountability. Building such a movement starts at the grassroots level and Aparajita Gogoi of CEDPA presented strategies for empowering local communities with a global voice. By providing a safe space for dialogue, communities are given the opportunity to share concerns and demand action from local health facilitators and government officials.
Increasing opportunities for dialogue allows for bottom up solutions and ensures that contextual variables are taken into consideration. “We need arenas for brokering diverse groups to compare notes and streamline synergies, ” said Mogedal. I am energized by the lessons learned today and eager to apply these key messages next week in Washington, DC during the seventh meeting of the Advancing Policy Dialogue for Maternal Health at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that will further address “Monitoring, Transparency, and Accountability for Maternal Health.”
Originally posted on the Medscape blog Global Mamma, by Calyn Ostrowski of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Coordinator of the Maternal Health Dialogue Series in partnership with the Maternal Health Task Force and UNFPA.
Photo Credit: “Mothers and children waiting at the Bolemba healt centre” courtesy of flickr user hdptcar. -
GMHC 2010: Maternal Health Realities: Accountability and Behavior Change
›Four days ago a young woman died giving birth in a bustling marketplace in New Delhi. Just steps away from Parliament, this woman was left to die and no emergency care was sent to her – no midwives, nurses, or doctors; just people walking around her accepting the situation as normal and an uncontrollable way of life. But this is Delhi…not a remote tribal village where the nearest health clinic is hours away (on foot).
This juxtaposition lingers on in me as I sit in the plenary session of day two at the Global Maternal Health Conference and listen to Syeda Hameed, member of the Indian Parliament Planning Commission, discuss her recent visit to a remote village where every house has 10 children living in filth, flies, and emptiness.
Although I have been working on such development issues for the last five years I do not work in the field, nor do I visit the developing world on a regular basis. Hearing these stories, coupled with my firsthand experience of witnessing poverty here in Delhi reminds me of the daily reality of those 342,900 women who die every year. This is their way of life and I think it’s poignant that today’s sessions emphasize community based care, family planning, accountability, behavior change, and culture.
“Context, context, context,” said Wendy Graham of IMMPACT at yesterday’s plenary session. I agree, the context of social and cultural norms is an underlying factor that must be taken into consideration when implementing maternal and child health (MNCH) programs. With a background in psychology, I appreciated when Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta, of Aga Khan University, recognized the toll of poverty on the imagination and the mentality of fatalism.
That is why it is so essential to “ask the people how they feel and bring their voices into the forums where policy decisions are made,” said Hameed. It is also important to hold key players accountable and include men in MNCH activities.
During the side session Male Involvement in Reproductive and Maternal and Newborn Health six field experts (in which half the panelists and audience members were men!) discussed effective methods for increasing male participation in family planning, vasectomies, gender equality, and hospital care.
The key findings from this discussion include:- Targeted interventions that educate men about danger signs and pregnancy complications correlates with behavior change and increased facility births.
- Many young married men feel pressured to prove their fertility. A sample of men was evaluated and those who had increased education and income were more likely to delay first pregnancy.
- Vasectomy is not something men want to talk about with family planning fieldworkers; however, official recognition of the vasectomy benefits by the government did increase referrals.
- Puppet and theater shows that demonstrate gender equity behaviors provide an opportunity for dialogue. Women in this study reported increased gender equity in family planning decision-making.
Originally posted at Maternal Health Task Force, by Calyn Ostrowski of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Coordinator of the Maternal Health Dialogue Series in partnership with the Maternal Health Task Force and UNFPA.
Photo Credit: “Parliament Street” courtesy of flickr user ~FreeBirD®~. -
GMHC 2010: Empowering the Next Generation
›“We do not need new legislation… we need affordable, effective, and scalable solutions,” said Shn Gulamnabi Azad, Minister of Health, India, at the opening ceremony of the first-ever Global Maternal Health Conference in New Delhi. Co-hosted by the Maternal Health Task Force and the Public Health Institute of India, this three-day technical meeting builds upon the momentum of Women Deliver and the G8 summit by bringing together 700 researchers, program managers, advocates, media, and young people to exchange ideas, share data, develop strategies, and identify solutions for reducing maternal mortality.
In order to reduce India’s maternal mortality rates, Azad called for the repositioning of family planning programs to include maternal and child health and not limit the scope of services to population control as historically executed. Improving family planning and maternal health services must also address the reproductive health needs of adolescent girls, and India is currently developing a new ministry that will target gender inequality, poverty, early child marriages, as well as other critical health issues important to young girls such as the dissemination of sanitary napkins.
“Although the legal age of marriage is 18, there are districts in India where 35 percent of the population is married between the ages of 15-18,” said Azad. During the side event “Adolescent Girls: Change Agents for Healthy Mother and Child,” technical experts such as Anil Paranjap of the Indian Institute of Health Management presented evidence that girls who marry between 15-18 are five times more likely to die during childbirth than women in their early 20’s.
“We still have deep-rooted subordination that makes it very difficult for young women to realize their sexual and reproductive health rights,” said Sanam Anwar with the Oman Medical College. Interventions such as the UDAAN project – a private-public partnership between the Center for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) and the Government of India – demonstrate promising solutions for empowering young people through the use of existing infrastructure. In collaboration with teachers, parents, principals, and students, this project successfully increased leadership skills and improved youth knowledge on menstruation, health, friendship, peer pressure, early marriage, and reproductive health, said Sudipta Mukhopadhyay of CEDPA.
Empowering “young people” to improve maternal health also requires that the community support committed new thinkers and future leaders. The Young Champions of Maternal Health Program is a unique and refreshing group of young professionals from 13 countries dedicated to improving maternal health, and I look forward to learning how this new energy will further the maternal health agenda.
Originally posted at Maternal Health Task Force, by Calyn Ostrowski of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Coordinator of the Maternal Health Dialogue Series in partnership with the Maternal Health Task Force and UNFPA.
Photo Credit: “Indian Girl” courtesy of flickr user Jarek Jarosz. -
‘NSB’ Blogs from the 2010 Global Maternal Health Conference in New Delhi
›The 2010 Global Maternal Health Conference kicked off today, perhaps fittingly, in India – one of the world’s fastest growing nations but one that also faces serious reproductive health challenges. The Wilson Center’s Calyn Ostrowski is in New Delhi for the conference and will be providing updates to The New Security Beat throughout the week.
Those interested can also find a schedule of events and list of participants on the conference website as well as live webcasted events on the main page. Stay tuned!
Photo Credit: “Mumbai, India, November 2009” courtesy of flickr user travelmeasia. -
The Future of Sub-Saharan Africa’s Tentative Fertility Decline
›August 25, 2010 // By Richard CincottaIn her recent post on The New Security Beat, Jennifer Sciubba argues that the medium-fertility variant projection published in the UN Population Division’s biennial projections — the source of most future data published in the Population Reference Bureau’s 2010 World Population Data Sheet — forecasts an unrealistically low total fertility rate (TFR) for sub-Saharan Africa in 2050, at a rate of 2.5 lifetime childbirths per woman.
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“All Consuming:” U of M’s ‘Momentum’ on Population, Health, Environment, and More
›August 23, 2010 // By Schuyler NullMinnesota’s Institute on the Environment is only in its third year of operation but has already established itself as an emerging forum for population, health, and, environment issues, due in no small part to its excellent thrice-a-year publication, Momentum. The journal is not only chock-full of high production values and impressively nuanced stories on today’s global problems, but is also, amazingly, available for free.
Momentum has so far covered issues ranging from food security, gender equity, demographic change, geoengineering, climate change, life without oil, and sustainable development.
Highlights from the latest issue include: “Girl Empower,” by Emily Sohn; “Bomb Squad,” with Paul Ehrlich, Bjørn Lomborg, and Hans Rosling; and “Population Hero,” on the fiscal realities of stabilizing growth rates.
The lead story featured below, “All Consuming,” by David Biello, focuses on the debate over whether consumption or population growth poses a bigger threat to global sustainability.Two German Shepherds kept as pets in Europe or the U.S. use more resources in a year than the average person living in Bangladesh. The world’s richest 500 million people produce half of global carbon dioxide emissions, while the poorest 3 billion emit just 7 percent. Industrial tree-cutting is now responsible for the majority of the 13 million hectares of forest lost to fire or the blade each year — surpassing the smaller-scale footprints of subsistence farmers who leave behind long, narrow swaths of cleared land, so-called “fish bones.”
Continue reading on Momentum.
In fact, urban population growth and agricultural exports drive deforestation more than overall population growth, according to new research from geographer Ruth DeFries of Columbia University and her colleagues. In other words, the increasing urbanization of the developing world — as well as an ongoing increase in consumption in the developed world for products that have an impact on forests, whether furniture, shoe leather, or chicken fed on soy meal — is driving deforestation, rather than containing it as populations leave rural areas to concentrate in booming megalopolises.
So are the world’s environmental ills really a result of the burgeoning number of humans on the planet — growing by more than 150 people a minute and predicted by the United Nations to reach at least 9 billion people by 2050? Or are they more due to the fact that, while human population doubled in the past 50 years, we increased our use of resources fourfold?
Photo Credit: “All Consuming” courtesy of Momentum. -
Misguided Projections for Africa’s Fertility
›By assuming that sub-Saharan Africa’s total fertility rate will decrease to 2.5 children per woman by 2050, the most recent population projections issued by the Population Reference Bureau likely continue to underestimate fertility for Africa. Though northern Africa has significantly lowered fertility, sub-Saharan Africa’s TFR is still 5 children per woman. Achieving the levels projected by PRB or the United Nations will largely depend on whether the conditions that led to past fertility declines for other states can be established in sub-Saharan Africa.
Demographers have identified numerous factors associated with fertility decline, including increased education for females, shifting from a rural agricultural economy to an industrial one, and introduction of contraceptive technology. Sub-Saharan Africa is only making slow progress in each of these areas.
Surveying Obstacles to Development
Primary school enrollment is up, but the pace of improvement is declining. Meanwhile, gender gaps persist: Enrollment for boys remains significantly higher than for girls. Girls’ education is associated with lower fertility, partly because education helps women take charge of their fertility and also because education influences employment opportunities. Increased female labor force participation has been shown to increase the cost of having children, and is therefore associated with initial fertility declines.
Disease is one wildcard for Africa that limits the utility of past models of demographic transition in the African context. HIV/AIDS is decimating sub-Saharan Africa’s adult workforce and creating shortages of teachers that will impede future efforts to boost primary school enrollment. According to the United Nations, the number of teachers in sub-Saharan Africa needs to double in the next five years to reach Millennium Development goals.
Development that would shift the region’s economies from agriculture to industry is also lagging. While several West African countries are seeing some gains, the African continent on the whole faces major structural impediments to development. In The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier points out that many of these countries may have “missed the boat” to attract investment and industry that would pull the region out of poverty, partly because the least developed countries are still not cost-competitive enough when compared with current centers of manufacturing, like China.
Finally, there remains a high unmet need for family planning. One in four women aged 15 to 49 who are married or in union –- and who have expressed an interest in using contraceptives — still do not have access to family planning tools. In general, maternal mortality remains high and adolescents in the poorest households are three times more likely to become pregnant and give birth than those in the richest households, according to the most recent UN Millennium Development Goals report.
Sub-Saharan Africa: Off the Radar?
Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a lack of attention by the international community and lack of political capacity at home. Many countries in the region are plagued by civil strife and poor governance, and developed countries continue to fall short of development assistance pledges. There is not the same sense of urgency today among developed countries about the global population explosion as there once was. Cold War politics and the environmental and feminist movements motivated much of the study of fertility and funding of population programs during the second half of the 20th century. Attention by governments and NGOs sped the fertility transition among many countries.
Today, the world’s wealthiest countries are not concerned primarily with Africa’s problems, but rather are more concerned with their own population decline and with the national security implications of population trends in areas associated with religious extremism. The recession has further hindered the flow of development funds.
Fertility is the most difficult population component to predict, and demographers must draw on the experiences of other regions to inform assessments of Africa’s population patterns. Demographers seem to be overconfident that Africa’s fertility will follow the pattern of recent declines, particularly in Latin America, which were more rapid than Western Europe’s decline due to the diffusion of technology and knowledge.
Once states begin the demographic transition towards lower fertility and mortality, they have tended to continue, with few exceptions. Therefore, most projections for Africa assume the same linear pattern of decline will hold. Yet, the low priority of Africa’s population issues among the world’s wealthiest states, combined with shortfalls in education, development, and contraception, may mean that the demographic transition in Africa will be slower than predicted.
Projections are useful to give us a picture of what the world could look like if meaningful policy changes are made. In the case of sub-Saharan Africa, prospects for these projections are dim.
Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba is the Mellon Environmental Fellow in the Department of International Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. She is also the author of a forthcoming book, The Future Faces of War: Population and National Security.
Photo Credit: “Waiting,” ECWA Evangel Hospital, Jos, Nigeria, courtesy of flickr user Mike Blyth.
