Author: Naureen Shameen

Is Zika a tipping point in the fight for reproductive rights in Latin America?

Much has changed since the Zika virus was declared a global public health emergency by the World Health Organization earlier this month. The WHO alert came as the infection was linked to more than 4,000 reported cases of microcephaly—a birth defect which causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and brain damage—in Brazil since October. While scientists work to determine the precise connection between the Zika virus and microcephaly, as well as other mental illness risks according to the latest warnings from health experts, the outbreak has kindled a critical conversation about reproductive health in themore than 25 countries and territories in the Americas where Zika infections have spiked.

Exposing the health care reality for women and girls

Recommendations by government officials in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and El Salvador for women to “avoid getting pregnant” only exposes the stark reality for many women and girls in Latin America, especially in rural areas. Most have minimal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights or education. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, for instance, WHO estimates that 22 percent of women want to delay or prevent pregnancy but do not have access to birth control. There are high levels of misinformation—for instance, most women and girls are not educated about contraception or family planning due to strong conservative rhetoric.

Women’s groups are mobilizing to fill the gap in sex education throughout the region, teaching women and girls about their sexual and reproductive health and rights, and helping them access contraceptives. They also help women to navigate the complex abortion laws and exceptions, as well as find physicians that provide reliable care and honest advice.

Read the full article from Global Fund for Women now. 

Egypt: five-year prison sentence for children on blasphemy charges

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights condemns the convictions and sentences recently handed down in cases involving the so called “defamation and insult” of Islam.

In the most recent case (no. 350/2015), the Beni Mazar Juvenile Misdemeanor Court sentenced three Coptic students—Muler Atef Daoud, Albert Ashraf, and Bassem Amgad—to five years in prison. A fourth defendant, Clinton Magdi, was placed in a juvenile penal institution when the case was referred to trial. The students had created a video mocking certain practices of the Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh). In another case, the Edku Misdemeanor Court on February 23 upheld a three-year sentence issued in absentia against Mustafa Abd al-Nabi after he published some religious opinions on his personal Facebook page. The EIPR notes that these sentences are part of a vicious assault on civil liberties and violate citizens’ constitutional rights, most importantly, freedom of religion, opinion, and expression.

The EIPR has documented nine cases since the beginning of 2015 in which 12 defendants, including Copts and Muslims, both Shia and Sunni, as well as atheists, were convicted. More than 11 cases are still pending before the Public Prosecution. Some 14 defendants are charged in these cases under Articles 98(f), 160, and 161 of the Penal Code, which criminalize contempt of religion. Several of the defendants have been detained pending investigation for periods exceeding the legal limit, while others were released on bail. Still other cases are pending that involve administrative sanctions, such as work suspension and docking of wages.

Read the full article from EIPR now. 

Pregnant and desperate in Evangelical Brazil

As Mariana stepped out of the car, her boyfriend Rafael knew he might never see her again.

It was a sunny summer’s morning two years ago in Rio de Janeiro, and the young couple had pulled up outside a small house in a residential northern suburb. The address had been given to them a few days earlier over the telephone by a man who did not identify himself. He told them this address was a place where they could get a certain criminal service: abortion.

Mariana, then 23, was 10 weeks pregnant and desperate. She and Rafael, her boyfriend of six months, were students and had no way to financially support a baby. Making matters worse, Mariana came from a strict evangelical Christian family. “I hadn’t dared buy contraception because if my family found it they would know I was having sex,” she said. “If they found out I was pregnant they would have forced us to get married and would have been angry forever.”

On the day of Mariana’s abortion, Rafael handed over a bag containing 1,600 reais, about $575, to a group of men who approached their car. Then they ordered him to leave. “They would not give us any information about how the procedure would be done or who would perform it,” he said. “I knew she might die or end up with terrible complications. But that was the choice we had.”

Rafael was right to be scared. Hundreds of thousands of women are hospitalized each year following complications from illegal abortions in Brazil, where legal terminations are allowed only in very limited circumstances. Scores of them die.

For decades, Brazilian authorities tolerated underground clinics, but in recent years there has been a major crackdown, coinciding with an increasingly hard-line religious Congress. The result is that far more dangerous procedures are carried out by far more unscrupulous people, according to women’s health experts.

Read the full article at Foreign Policy now. 

Central Asia: Backlash against women’s rights

Last week, Global Fund for Women brought together 85 activists from sister organizations and women’s funds in Europe & Central Asia for a meeting in Batumi, Georgia. 

“The Europe and Central Asia Activist Convening brought together activists and women’s funds from very diverse backgrounds,” explains Mariam Gagoshashvili, Global Fund for Women’s Program Officer for Europe and Central Asia. “Yet it was very important to realize that the external and internal challenges these movements are facing are common ones and that we need to unite to counter them.”

One of the key challenges discussed at the meeting is the growing backlash against women and trans* human rights defenders and social change activists in the region. In countries including Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan, just to name a few, organizations working on human rights—especially around gender, sexual orientation, or reproductive rights—are being increasingly targeted and threatened.

For many of the women in Batumi, the very act of traveling to the convening posed severe security threats. Some shared stories of the harassment and interrogation they would face when they traveled back to their home countries—still emphasizing that the opportunity to be there and exchange strategies and stories with other activists throughout the region was worth it.

“When I return to my home, I will be invited to the police office, I will be fingerprinted, and I will be sent to the HIV office,” shared one activist. “I will be interrogated to find out where I went and why I went and how I went.”

Shrinking space for activism

In Europe and Central Asia, in recent years, grass-roots women-led organizations have worked hard to organize movements, make their voices heard in public conversations around gender equality, and to drive positive shifts in culture.

But, as the activists convened in Batumi highlighted, for every positive shift, there have been strong resistant reactions.

Read the full article from the Global Fund for Women now. 

Zika, disease of the poor, may not change abortion in Brazil

Six months pregnant with her first child, Eritania Maria has a rash and a mild fever, symptoms of the Zika virus linked to brain deformities in newborn children in Brazil. But the 17-year-old is too scared to take a test to confirm if she has Zika.

Like other women in the slums of Recife, which squat on stilts over mosquito-ridden marshland in northeast Brazil, Maria has few options if her child develops microcephaly, the condition marked by an abnormally small head and underdeveloped brain that has been linked to Zika.

Brazil has amongst the toughest abortion laws in the world and is culturally conservative. Even if she wanted an illegal abortion and could afford one, Maria is too heavily pregnant for a doctor to risk it. So she prefers not to know.

“I’m too scared of finding out my baby will be sick,” she told Reuters, her belly poking out from beneath a yellow top.

The Zika outbreak has revived the debate about easing abortion laws but Maria’s case highlights a gap between campaigners and U.N. officials calling for change and Brazil’s poor, who are worst affected by the mosquito-borne virus yet tend to be anti-abortion.

Add a conservative Congress packed with Evangelical Christians staunchly opposed to easing restrictions, plus the difficulty of identifying microcephaly early enough to safely abort, and hopes for change seem likely to be frustrated.

As with many countries in mostly Roman Catholic Latin America, Brazil has outlawed abortion except in cases of rape, when the mother’s life is at risk or the child is too sick to survive.

An estimated 850,000 women in Brazil have illegal abortions every year, many under dangerous conditions. They can face up to 3 years in prison although in practice, jail terms are extremely rare.

With two-thirds of the population Catholic and support for Evangelicals growing fast, polls show Brazilians oppose changing the law. A survey by pollster VoxPopuli in 2010 showed that 82 percent reject decriminalization, while a Datafolha poll the same year put the figure at 72 percent.

Vandson Holanda, head of health for the Catholic Church in Brazil’s northeast, said there was no chance the Church would shift its position on abortion because of Zika.

Read the full article from Reuters

Tunisia’s single mothers still struggle to overcome stigma

The situation of unmarried mothers, faced with a delicate dilemma and deprived of rights, makes a telling allegory for modern Tunisia — a country increasingly liberated but that still promotes conservative values.

On one side, the mere existence of unmarried mothers breaks the great taboo of premarital sex. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center from 2013, 89% of Tunisians say sex outside of marriage is “morally wrong.” On the other side, a growing number of individuals are emancipating themselves from traditional family values.

This trend is mainly reflected in delayed marriage. In 2012, the average age of marriage was 28 for women and 33 for men, leading to an increase in premarital sex. According to psychoanalyst Nedra Ben Smail, who authored the book “Vierges? La nouvelle sexualité des Tunisiennes” (“Virgins? The new sexuality of Tunisian women”), only 20% of Tunisian women remain virgins until marriage.

Despite the country’s rapidly changing ways, Tunisia struggles to adapt its legislation to its modernizing society. In November 2011, 10 months after Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country, Souad Abderrahim, a female representative of the Islamist party Ennahda, called single mothers a “disgrace.” Her statement caused significant outrage in the media and on social networks. Articles were published in response on the award-winning collective blog Nawaat, while Tunisian activist Lina Ben Mhenni, a 2011 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, called Abderrahim’s declaration “outrageous.”

However, more than four years later, no real public debate has taken place on the issue. The country is ruled by President Beji Caid Essebsi, who was elected in December 2014 after a virulent anti-Islamist campaign against Ennahda, the governing party at the time. But Essebsi and his secular liberal party, Nidaa Tunis, allied with Ennahda just after the election. The two parties support conservative policies regarding moral issues, refusing to amend, for example, the law that criminalizes homosexuality.

Read the full article from Al Monitor

Bill banning child marriage fails in Pakistan after Council deems ‘un-Islamic’

Pakistani lawmakers had to withdraw a bill aimed at curbing the practice of child marriage after a prominent religious body declared the legislation un-Islamic.

The bill, which proposed raising the marriage age for females from 16 to 18, also called for harsher penalties for those who would arrange marriages involving children. Despite the laws in place, child marriages, particularly involving young female brides, are common in parts of the country. It’s estimated that some 20 percent of girls in the country are married before they turn 18.

But the Council of Islamic Ideology, a constitutional body which gives advice to parliament on the compatibility of laws with Sharia, appeared to slap down the legislation after deeming it “un-Islamic” and “blasphemous,” according toAgence France Presse. It had already handed down a similar ruling in 2014.

Read the full article on the Washington Post now.