Legalizing Abortion
Finally, women in Mexico have won their long-fought battles with the male-dominated Catholic Church hierarchies their right and freedom to choose abortion. If the men could be pregnant, we would have abortion on demand long time ago. Abortion rights have gained ground in Latin America when more than two thirds of the Mexico City’s legislative assembly members voted on 24 April to approve a law allowing Mexican women to have abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancies. This law indicates a sign of political and social change in the region where only two countries, Cuba and Guyana allow abortions in the first trimester. Since 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized that the wellbeing of women depended on opportunities for women to control their lives in all areas, including education and health. Increased recognition in the United Nations circles of reproductive rights came much later on. In 1968, the Teheran Declaration of International Conference on Human Rights included the rights of individuals to information and family planning and these were confirmed later on at the international conferences on population issues held in Bucharest in 1974, Mexico City in 1984 and Cairo in 1994. Declarations ensuing from those various international conferences spearhead the winning of a legal battle that happened in Mexico last week. Women in Mexico and in other Latin American countries have the right to attain the highest standards of sexual and reproductive health, including safe abortion, and to make reproductive choices free from coercion from conservative groups in the government or religious establishments.
Filed under Gender Issues, Travel, United Nations, World Affairs | Comment (0)Religious Beliefs Have No Place in Constitution
Constitution is a document that set up the way the government is run and organized. It is a document in which these laws and principles are written down for all citizen of the land, not for a particular group of peoples following a certain religious faith. Law should be set up based on the aspiration of the people, including non-believers, and those who do not follow any organized religion. Secular and spiritual affairs cannot be mixed. Globally, only a few countries have declared a state religion in the constitution. The majority of governments in the world have separated religion from affairs of the states. Declaring a state religion is therefore, non-democratic. A civilized society should be organized and run by all the people living in the same land/country. In a democratic government, Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims, Hindus and Atheists have equal opportunity to participate in governing on an equal footing. I, for one, cannot accept the demand of the group of monks in Thailand that Buddhism be written in the newly drafted Constitution as a “State Religion”. The demand already is encouraging further divisiveness among the people in the country. It is best for Thailand to remain a secular state as before.
Filed under Thailand, Travel | Comment (0)Groundbreaking Day
I could not agree more with Margaret Beckett, UK Foreign Secretary who chaired the Security Council, that April 17 was a groundbreaking day at the UN Headquarters. For the first time, The Security Council debated climate change issue that could threatens world peace and security. At the debate, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated that access to energy, scarcity of food and water could transform peaceful competition into conflicts and that the projected climate change could not only have serious environmental, social and economic implications, but implications for peace and security as well. He warned us that compared to the cost of conflict and its consequence; the cost of prevention would be far lower in financial terms and in human lives. Some country representatives expressed their disagreement to bringing the issue of climate change for discussion in the Security Council. They said that climate change and energy are issues for the General Assembly to deal with. The United States’ representative said that climate change presented serious challenges, citing the agreement at the meeting two years ago of the group of Eight leaders that energy, security, climate change and sustainable development were fundamentally linked. Brett Schaefer and Ben Lieberman, experts from the Heritage Foundation, somehow disagreed. They issued a paper, distributed to the members of civil society, saying that the security implication of climate change was merely speculative at this point and, even if they result as predicted, would not pose an immediate threat for decades, therefore, not appropriate for debate by the Security Council at this time. Margaret Beckett, stood her ground and argued that climate change is the issue that is right for debate by members of the Security Council and that UK was not the only country that held this view. There were 52 countries participated in the debate. Beckett also noted that a group of retired US generals recently put out a report projecting that climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security and will act as a “threat multiplier” for instability in some of the world most volatile regions. They suggested that the US should integrate consequences of climate change into national security and defense strategies. France also supported bringing the issue for debate in the Security Council under its mandate “to prevent conflict”. China, the Russian Federation, and some other representatives of developing countries maintained their original position that climate change was the issue for debate by the General Assembly and by other appropriate international forums because the Security Council has no expert knowledge on this issue.
Filed under Environment, United Nations, World Affairs | Comment (0)Security Implication of Changing Climate
There are potential drivers of conflict at national and international level from climate change and global warming. Damage to earth’s weather systems from Greenhouse gases will change rainfall pattern. Up to 30 percent of animal and plant species will be vulnerable to extinction if global temperatures rise by 1.5 - 2.5 degrees Celsius, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report said. Conflict among people arise when resources become scarce and when access to energy, water and food are limited. The rise of sea level from melting of glaziers, and the change of landscape, especially along the coastal areas, will bring about border disputes among countries. Thanks to the initiative of the United Kingdom, Chair of the Security Council for April, these security risks will be put on the table for discussions. For the first time, members of the UN Security Council will debate the security implication of global warming on April 17. These debates will surely raise public awareness on future security implications and future dangers that we are facing. The timing of the Security Council debate is good as an appropriate follow-up to difficult negotiations by governments and scientists at the recent IPCC Meeting in Brussels, Belgium. The study of climate change around the world forecast different impact among the different regions affecting billions of people. Africa will be hardest hit by water shortage. Asia will face massive flooding by the melting of ice from the Himalayas. Australia will loose it’s corals of the Great Barrier Reef. And North America will have to deal with more severe storm. We are waiting for the outcome of this important Security Council debates and the following recommendations for action to prevent impending global disaster.
Filed under Environment, Science, United Nations, World Affairs | Comment (0)Gender Gap Index
An ambitious undertaking, the Global Gender Gap Report 2006, was recently put out by the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, This report gives us a new framework for measuring gender equality in four categories: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. The group of international experts carried out studies in 115 countries, representing 90% of the world’s population. They found that gender-based discrimination exists in all countries, transcending cultures, religions and income groups. They set out to measure the differences and inequalities between men and women by analyzing their assigned role and daily activities as to who has access to and control over resources, and who has opportunity for making important decisions. I hope that the report is useful for political, business leaders and members of the civil society as further analytical tool and as information resources for development planning. The 2006 Gender Gap Index also reveals many interesting insights on global and regional trends and specific comparative information between countries. For example, Sweden and other Nordic countries have closed about 80% of the gender gap. Sweden also is the only country in the world where men and women form equal number among cabinet ministers and members of the parliament, and holds the top spot on economic participation and opportunity. United States lags behind many European nations and Canada on economic participation and opportunity and educational attainment. Latin America as a whole has the smallest gender gaps in the world on health and survival. Kuwait has the highest ranking among the Arab countries in the region, followed closely by Tunisia and Jordan. Among Asian countries, the Philippines holds a top ten of ranking with good performances on all four categories measured, where as large countries in the region, Bangladesh, India, Iran and Pakistan hold some of the lowest ranking positions. New Zealand and Australia rank well in closing the gender-gap in general. Among African countries South Africa does well on political empowerment with more than 40% of its ministers are females, and more than a third of the positions in parliament held by women. Tanzania has the narrowest economic gap between women and men. Gender Gap Index gives me a useful tool for furthering my work in education and communication support activities aiming to reach the goal of gender equality, as set by the United Nations.
Filed under Gender Issues, United Nations | Comment (0)Conflicts Over Water
A while ago, someone said to me that men conduct wars over oil, but women fight over water. We can see conflicts over water resource happen on a daily basis in villages in Asia, Africa and Latin America among rural women at wells or community water pump, where they fetch water for household use. Now, a large number of people live in cities, so conflict over water has become urbanized. Conflicts result from people asking for connection to the water supply without the means to pay for the cost or, in some areas from scarcity and lack of access to clean drinking water. The analysis of the controversy over the management of water resources in the urban setting by UNESCO gives us insight into these problems in Brazil, Mexico, France, India, Indonesia, Argentina, Italy and Germany. Publication of the analysis warns us that we should take good care of this limitted resource, and that drinking water supply is a scarce resource that human beings cannot live without therefore, people will fight when lack of supply. The study also provides us with knowledge of the origin and nature of water-related unrest and conflict in the urban context that requires urgent action by global community now and in the future, if we want peace in the world. The UN Millennium Development Goal has called for having the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015, which is only eight more years away. Population growth, hyper-urbanization, poverty, disparity in the world are related issues to water resource use. We should consider all these issues together for taking action to achieve the set goal.
Filed under Environment, United Nations | Comment (0)