The Global Pulse Journal Blog

[This article was originally posted on Open Forum, a blog supported by the community of Health and Human Rights: An International Journal]

On December 22, New Zealand and Belgium became the 25^th and 26^th nations to ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). The convention needs only four more ratifications to achieve the 30-state minimum to enter into force. Once in force, it will enact a ban on the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of most cluster munitions, which include bombs, missiles, or rockets that open midair to scatter tens to thousands of small submunitions over a wide area. The CCM also requires that states destroy their stockpiles in eight years, clear contaminated land within ten years, and provide victim assistance. Read the rest of this entry →

Note:  The GP editorial staff’s thoughts and hearts go out in solidarity to the residents of Port-au-Prince and their families, as well as our colleagues in Haiti.  We will be updating this post as more information becomes available.

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Earthquake Crisis in Haiti

Original post by Wilnise Jasmin [01.14.2010 @ 6:53 AM EST]

As you may have already heard, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck about 10 miles southwest of Port-au- Prince, Haiti at about 5 pm Tuesday night. The quake ravaged the infrastructure of Haiti’s fragile government and destroyed some of its most important cultural symbols.

“Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.” He added: “All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe.”

President Obama promised that Haiti would have the “unwavering support” of the United States.

Haitian authorities and humanitarian aid organizations are struggling to respond amid devastation. Read the rest of this entry →

This is a guest post by Daniel Rhee, AMSA Global’s Health and Human Rights coordinator.  It was originally posted on the Global listserv in honor of Human Trafficking Awareness Day on January 11, 2010.

“To some, human trafficking may seem like a problem limited to other parts of the world. In fact, it occurs in every country, including the United States, and we have a responsibility to fight it just as others do. ” - Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton (full article here)

Good afternoon, Global!

Today is National Global Human Trafficking Awareness day, and for those who are unfamiliar, human trafficking is “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.” (UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons)

It is one of several forms of slavery that exist today (click here to learn about modern slavery), and as our Secretary of State stated so clearly, it is not just an international issue, but a domestic one as well.

Here are some quick facts from freetheslaves.net and the US DOJ:

• there are more slaves now than ever before in human history – approximately 27 million around the world
• the cost of a slave has decreased from $40,000 in 1850, to $90 in 2008
• it would cost $40 per family to buy all bonded laborers in the world – Americans spend this much on chocolate each Valentine’s Day
• 17,500 slaves are brought into the United States every year
• sexual exploitation of minors is lawfully considered human trafficking – approximately 325,000 children in the United States are subjected to sexual exploitation every year
• the average age of entry into the commercial sex industry within the United States is 11-12 years old

So for those of you who want to learn/do more, here are a few things for today: Read the rest of this entry →

On behalf of Physicians for Human Rights, I am pleased to announce the conference below. For more information, please visit www.PHRStudentConference.org.

Physicians for Human Rights National Conference
Health and Human Rights in 2010
Saturday, February 20^th, 2010
Boston University Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts

Register now at www.PHRStudentConference.org! Read the rest of this entry →

Between World AIDS Day (Dec. 1) and International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10), PHR is gathering 10,000 signatures asking the U.S. Senate to ratify the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 2010.

Conceived as a “Bill of Rights for Women,” CEDAW sets a common international definition for gender-based discrimination, and establishes an agenda for ending it. States ratifying CEDAW are required to institutionalize gender equality through domestic legislation, repeal and replace all discriminatory provisions in their laws, and establish public institutions of recourse for women who require protection against discrimination.

Discrimination is bad. Women should have equal rights. Surely this is something we can agree on? Not so fast. Read further for the controversial stuff. Read the rest of this entry →

The new issue of GP is up and running just in time for World AIDS Day!

New in this issue:

Today at the World Bank, a collection of 400+  leaders from organizations including the Global Fund and PEPFAR, as well as the Deputy US Secretary of State, Jack Lew, joined Bank Director, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to discuss the current state of HIV/AIDS and what remains to be done to curb the epidemic. Facts revealed today include the following stats:

+ mother-to-child transmission has increased from 10% to 45% since 2004

+ 2.7 million people newly infected with HIV in 2008

+ HIV infections have fallen 17% since 2001

+ according to the Haiti GHESKIO-Cornell evaluation by Jean Pape MD, without ART there are 80% deaths at  year, contrasted to with ART 80% survival at 2 years

+ GHESKIO-Cornell, there is a correlation between food insecurity and CD4 counts: CD4 counts decrease as food insecurity increases

+ Successful HIV containment in Bangladesh (except in Dhaka) due to preventive education efforts directed towards sex workers, injection drug users and MSM

+ Botswana’s anti-retroviral medicine program covers 80% of its population and has cut AIDS-related deaths by more than half in five years

Read the rest of this entry →

As part of World AIDS Day efforts to educate the public about the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Global Fund Ambassador for the protection of mothers and children against AIDS and first lady of France, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy released a series of interviews “talking about and letting the world know that a woman who is expecting a child can make sure that this child can have a healthy life,” Ms Bruni-Sarkozy told the BBC. She recalled her experience meeting mothers in Burkina Faso and cited this experience as showing her that progress can and must occur in the fight against mother-to-child transmission of HIV. She renewed a call to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2015 through a focus on educating women and increasing their access to means to fight and prevent the disease. This has been a focus area of the Global Fund, UNAIDS, UNICEF, WHO and UNFPA.

This is an important effort given the impact of mother-to-child transmission of the virus.

• Currently, over 45% of HIV-infected pregnant women receive ARV prophylaxis (up from 10% in 2004)
• Only 15% of children born to mothers infected with HIV in reporting low- and middle-income countries were tested for the virus within the first two months of life
• Only 38% of the over 730,000 children in low- and middle-income countries in need of ARV treatment in 2008 received these medications

For more on these efforts, see press coverage of the Global Fund’s World AIDS Day activities.

From Al Jazeera (English version):

The United Nations has welcomed the decision by Sri Lanka’s government to announce the release of the remaining 130,000 Tamils kept in detention camps for the last six months.

About 250,000 people fled the final bloody phase of the civil war between the government and separatist Tamil Tigers.

They were ultimately housed in government-run camps in the district of Vavuniya.

Hundreds of thousands of Tamils’ have been displaced in the fighting and are now living in hastily put together refugee camps that have been largely shut off from the outside world.

This is the start of another GP Blog series, inspired by a recent workshop in New York City addressing the implications of human trafficking and commercial sex exploitation in the clinical setting. It is my hope that this series can help increase awareness of the issue, and keep the conversation going. Read the rest of this entry →