Worldwide Campaign To End Gender-Based Violence

The world-wide campaign to end gender-based violence begins today. There are many forms of violence against women, but the most awful one is the female genital mutilation. A friend of mine, Doctor Nawal El Saadawi, Egypt’s former Director of Public Health, opened my eyes to this problem in 1976 when we were at Wellesley University attending the International meeting on Women and Development. She told me that circumcision was most often performed on young girls at the age of seven or eight to preserve their chastity by reducing the desire for sexual intercourse. This operation was done to her by a midwife at her home with the presence of female members of her family and her mother without her consent. She said that the psychological impact has remained with her for a long time. Later in 1980, She wrote a chapter on “Circumcision of Girls” in her book, the Hidden Face of Eve. The World Health Organization estimated that between 100-140 million girls and women worldwide have undergone female genital mutilation, and every year 2 million girls are at risk from this horrible practice. Most of these girls live in 28 African countries, and a few in the Middle East and Asia. They are also increasingly found in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States of America, mostly among immigrants from countries where female genital mutilation is the tradition. About 80% of the cases involve excision of the clitorist and the labia minora. The more extreme type, infibulation, is found in Djibouti, Somalia and northan Sudan. In some countries, more affluent families seek the services of medical personnel to perform the operation. This medicalization of female genital mutilation should be stopped. Even when performed in sanitary condition, the operation is still unethical and violation of girls’ and women’s human rights. This practice has been consistently condemned by WHO, United Nations Organizations, and international communities for the last three decades. There have been changing of attitudes among local leaders about the dangers of female genital mutilation. it is my hope that this year’s campaign to end gender-based violence will intensify global efforts to end this cruel practice once and for all.

Cell Phone Wedding

Wedding is funny– an event where people come together to celebrate a successful sexual arrangement by dancing, singing, yelling, making silly jokes and speeches about the bride/bridegroom and their parents and about their “utopian” romantic love. In Bangladesh, weddings are series business conducted on the telephone or videoconference over the Internet between the parents/ families of the bride and the groom. In an arranged marriage, the Web camera or video are used to allow the bride and groom to see one another before the Wedding Day. Marriage can be arranged between Muslim families when the bride or the groom is living overseas by using the phones. The religious “imam” are arranged to be present at both ends of the call along with a civil official who certifies the vows. Paper works can be exchanged by fax or by mail. In Thailand, weddings are also organized using cell phone to prepare a packaged, combining scuba diving under-water or on-the-back-of an elephant ceremonies with parties and media coverage. In Canada, where I recently attended a wedding party of my niece, I saw one guest was dancing with a glass of wine in one hand and a cell phone in the other, communicating with someone far away, and not with a person with whom she was dancing. It is a funny world we live in.

Planting Trees

Something we can do by ourselves to deal with the threat of climate change is to plant more trees. A campaign to plant a billion trees within a year was launched earlier this month at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Each one of us can take the first step by joining the world-wide biilliontree campaign wherever we live. The United Nations Environment Programme is coordinating the rehabilitation of tens of millions of hectares of degraded land and reforesting the Earth. The productivity of the soil has to be restored together with provision of adequate water resources. Expanding tree cover areas will mitigate the build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a global warming greenhouse gas. To make up for the loss of trees in the past decade, environment experts said that 130 million hectares will have to be reforested, and to avert serious climate change we will have to plant some 14 billion trees every year for ten consecutive years. I agree with the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan when he stated at the Climate Change Conference in Nairobi that there was lack of leadership on climate change. I also hear the warnings of the UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner, that we have a short time to avert serious climate change. But I’ve come across some concrete successes in tree planting through community efforts. TheCommunity-based Forestry Management project, organized by the Ministry of Forestry in Indonesia, is one such action. This kind of success gives us hope that more could be organized at the community level with available local human resources. A lot of good work has already been done in this area by the World Agroforestry Centre in transforming lives and landscapes. The “Tree of Change” promotional education/communication programme, encourages people to participate in important action such as watershed protection, biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and environment governance.

Gender Personal Choice

Should people be allowed to alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery?
This is a question that is being discussed right now in community forums and by members of the New York City Board of Health. I have a simple answer to this question, that “freedom” means people are in total charge of their own bodies, therefore they ought to be able to decide whether to live a life as a man or a woman. Nature has equipped some species of fish with a capacity to change sex. Human beings are not that well equipped for they have to rely on sex-changed surgery by doctor’s, which is now a booming business in Asia. Thailand is now called the capital of sex-change. But sex-change surgery costs money and not many people can afford it. To be fair, all people should be allowed to have their personal choice on this.
A word of caution for a person who wants to make this sex-shift without going through the surgery; he/she must be prepared for life-long turmoil and confusion in social interactions with other people. This matter is not just a change of the boxes in one’s birth registration certificate, cross-dressing or exaggerated mannerism of one sex or the other, but it is a serious matter in dealing with existing prejudices in most traditional societies and in marriage laws, drafting and military services, parenting and child-adoption, children’s education and school administration. Most difficult of all, I think, would be the struggle to psychologically cope with the confusions of other people’s perceptions as to who you really are, while at the same time maintaining your own good mental health.

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My Flower Paintings

The colors and hues of flowers have always inspired me. Their beauty is timeless.
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1968 to 2006 © Mallica Vajrathon. all rights strictly reserved.

My Sealife Paintings

I am inspired by the beautiful colour combinations of fish and marine life. My impressionistic paintings bring out the natural patterns and designs from fish, sea shells, seaweed, corals and other various underwater plants.
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1968 to 2006 © Mallica Vajrathon. all rights strictly reserved.

My Paintings of Birds and Wings.

Wings of butterflies, birds, moths and beatles are full of colorful combinations, shapes and patterns. My impressionist paintings inspired by winged animals are designed to highlight the beauty of these complex combination of colours.
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1968 to 2006 © Mallica Vajrathon. all rights strictly reserved.

My Abstract Paintings

These are paintings of lines, circles, forms and patterns from nature. I find these designs not only beautiful, but also stimulating to the mind.
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1968 to 2006 © Mallica Vajrathon. all rights strictly reserved.

My Paintings of Leaves and Plants

Most people like to paint flowers, but I like to paint leaves and plants as well.
The patterns of palm and lotus leaves when the sun shines behind them is fascinating to me. I did a set of twelve paintings and a calendar under the theme of a Parade of Leaves four years ago. Since then, I have continued to find new patterns, forms, and colors to paint.

1968 to 2006 © Mallica Vajrathon. all rights strictly reserved.