Global Pulse Blog

From Women’s Enews:

Rescind the global gag rule. Refund U.N. family-planning. Restore contraceptive subsidy. These are just a few of the Bush-era regulations and policies that women’s advocates hope will come undone in the early days of 2009.

Most of these we are quite familiar about. But just in case…

Two of the changes–reversing the so-called global gag rule and restoring congressional funding to the United Nations Population Fund–are expected in Obama’s first days in the Oval Office and both are expected to have widespread international repercussions for reproductive health.

First imposed by GOP President Ronald Reagan and reinstated by the two Bush administrations, the global gag rule–also known as the Mexico City policy because Reagan announced it at a meeting there in 1984–prevents foreign recipients of State Department-administered family planning grants from performing abortions, counseling women about abortion or lobbying their nations to change abortion restrictions.

Both Obama and his Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton said during their presidential campaigns that they would release $45 million in annual appropriations for the United Nations Population Fund.

We can only hope.

Beneath the facade of economic progress in countries such as India, there is the reality of child labor and human trafficking.

“She came to Delhi dreaming of a new start, of escape from a life of poverty and hardship. Yet when she arrived, Sushma Kumari quickly realised she had been tricked.

Far from being trained in the skills of acupuncture, for two years she was forced to work as an unpaid domestic help in the home of the “doctor” supposed to be teaching her. She toiled from 5am to midnight, seven days a week. She was abused and mistreated. Almost certainly she was brought to Delhi by a professional trafficker; what is beyond doubt is that once she got here she lived the life of slave.”

Though India is a case study in child labor, this really is going on all over the world. Once again, the usual suspects are all there: poverty, the desire for profits, gender beliefs and cultural factors. As I have written before: Poverty creates and perpetuates the conditions for child labor, and education is the solution.

In case you have not noticed: the blog is back!