PAKISTAN: An unforgiveable sin

Photo: Kamila Hyat

A Pakistan charity has put up cradles with an appeal to place infants in them rather than murder them

LAHORE,  – The murder of infants, particularly girls, by poverty-stricken parents in Pakistan appears to be on the rise.

Late at night two months ago in a village in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, the parents of a two-day-old infant girl smothered the child, and then buried her tiny body in a distant field, carefully patting down the soil to hide any signs of digging. The mother cries often and says she still has nightmares about the event.

“I cried myself; I had delivered the baby and she was perfectly healthy. But her parents had two daughters already, and felt they couldn’t afford another. The father, a labourer, earned only 4,000 rupees (US$46.50) a month, and I know those people ate just once a day,” Suriya Bibi, a `dai’ or traditional midwife from the village, told IRIN.

According to Anwar Kazmi, a spokesperson for the charitable Edhi Foundation, more and more bodies of infants are being collected from the streets. “I would say there has been a 100 percent increase over the past decade in the number of bodies of infants we find. Nine out of 10 are girls,” he told IRIN.

Girls are traditionally considered a `burden’ on families, with large sums frequently spent on their marriages. “People feel girls make no economic contribution to families,” Gulnar Tabassum, a women’s rights activist, told IRIN.

Kazmi said 1,210 bodies of dead infants were found last year – compared to 999 in 2009.

“The reasons are linked to mindset and to poverty,” he said. While the Edhi Foundation places cradles outside the orphanages it runs, and urges people to leave babies in them rather than kill them, only a few choose to do so.

According to the Foundation, about 200 babies are left each year in the 400 cradles it puts out nationwide with signs urging parents to use them.

Since children born out of wedlock in this conservative society are at greater risk of infanticide, the Foundation encourages the placing of such children with responsible surrogate parents.

“These children are innocent,” said Kazmi.

No accurate statistics

The Foundation also collects its data mainly from larger cities. It is unknown how many other deaths may be taking place in rural areas, or regions in the tribal areas and Balochistan and Sindh provinces where official figures show poverty is highest.

The mothers themselves wish to save the children but they also see the economic struggle of their families in a time of growing inflation

“The number of tiny babies we bury is increasing. In some cases the neck or wrists have been slashed open,” said Muhammad Taufiq, a gravedigger in Lahore.

“I have had women who are pregnant come to me crying, because their husbands or in-laws say any baby born must be killed since they cannot raise it. I can do little to help, since abortion is illegal in the country, and for various cultural reasons the use of birth control is far too low, though many woman want to use it,” said gynaecologist Faiqa Siddiq who works at a charitable clinic for women.

“The mothers themselves wish to save the children but they also see the economic struggle of their families in a time of growing inflation,” she says.

According to data from the Federal Bureau of Statistics reported in the media, non-perishable food items saw price rises of 11.83 percent in the year to November 2011. Other percentage increases during the year were: tomatoes (42.02), spices (36.37), fresh fruit (29.62), betel leaves and nuts (24.56), condiments (23.50), milk (21.11), milk products (20.47), beverages (19.79), cooking oil (19.56), and meat (19.35).

“Times are becoming harder and harder. I have just given birth to my fourth child. We will do all we can to raise the children, and murder of course is an unforgivable sin, but sometimes I understand the despair of parents who do so,” said Safia Bibi, a washerwoman whose husband is an odd-job man.

The family earns a monthly income of Rs. 6,000 ($70). “The children go barefoot because just feeding them is next to impossible. We survive mainly on `roti’ [bread] and pickles,” she said.

kh/cb source www.irinnews.org

ZIMBABWE: Growing risk of waterborne diseases in rural areas

Photo: Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

An aid worker treats a cholera patient in Beitbridge, Zimbabwe, on the border with South Africa during the 2008/2009 outbreak of the waterborne disease

MHONDORO,  – Barbra Phiri, 20, a single mother living on a farm settlement in rural Mhondoro, about 45km southwest of the Zimbabwean capital Harare, does not think twice about letting her two-year-old twins splash about in a pool of greenish water close to her hut.

Since the rains began several weeks ago, dirty water has been accumulating on the settlement, now home to hundreds of former farmworkers and others displaced during Operation Murambatsvina in 2005 which razed illegal structures and left thousands without shelter.

Phiri remembers the 2008-2009 outbreak of cholera which killed more than 4,000 people and infected nearly 100,000 others, but sees it as a thing of the past and is still ignorant of how waterborne diseases are spread.

Her twins have a skin infection and frequent bouts of diarrhoea but, like most residents, she attributes such ailments to witchcraft, consulting a traditional healer for a cure.

Phiri told IRIN her first child died two years ago from diarrhoea. “We don’t use dirty water for drinking or cooking. We get clean water from the dam or the wells, so how can our children die from waterborne diseases?” she asked.

A few metres from Phiri’s hut is an overflowing pit latrine. Many inhabitants have resorted to relieving themselves in the open since most of their pit latrines are overflowing and unusable.

The 2009 Multiple Indicator Monitoring Survey (MIMS), compiled by the government and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), listed diarrhoea as one of the major causes of infant mortality resulting in around 4, 000 deaths in Zimbabwe annually.

The MIMS survey showed a 20 percent increase in under-five mortality since 1990.

With the advent of the rainy season and poor sanitary and hygienic facilities, people living in rural and peri-urban settlements like Phiri’s are vulnerable to waterborne diseases.

The survey said: “Recent assessments show a significant decline in rural sanitation sector performance,” adding: “The inability of vulnerable populations to access safe water and basic sanitation… has resulted in frequent diarrhoeal and cholera outbreaks.”

The Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) for Zimbabwe, launched in early December 2011, said “a third of rural Zimbabweans still drink from unprotected water sources and are thus exposed to waterborne diseases,” and noted reports of cholera cases in rural Chipinge, in the eastern province of Manicaland, and Chiredzi in the southeast of the country. 

More people seek treatment

A senior nurse at a clinic in rural Seke District, about 50km south of Harare, who preferred anonymity, told IRIN the number of people seeking treatment for diarrhoea and dysentery had increased since the onset of the rains.

“Typical of this time of the year when the rains fall, we treat a high number of people suffering from waterborne diseases… We have not received any cases of cholera but there is need to be on the alert all the time, because the surrounding villages are characterized by poor hygiene and sanitation. Many villagers tend to relieve themselves in the open because they cannot rehabilitate the Blair pit toilets that were built long ago,” she said.

Blair pit toilets were constructed in large numbers to improve rural sanitation in the 1980s. A fine wire mesh allowed gases produced by decomposition to escape, but prevented flies around the faecal matter from exiting the septic tank and so prevented the spread of diseases.

According a 2011 report by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the government entitled A Situational Analysis on the Status of Women’s and Children’s Rights in Zimbabwe, 2005-2010 42 percent of people in rural communities practised open defecation, while cholera, which used to see significant outbreaks every 10 years or so in the 1980s and 1990s, has now become an annual event.

The boreholes that were drilled in the 1980s have broken down and only a few that were sunk in recent years still function

Poor household income, the senior nurse said, prevented some villagers from seeking treatment, “meaning that the number of people suffering from waterborne diseases could be higher as some of the cases go unreported [as people cannot afford to travel to clinics].”

David Shoniwa, 65, from Dema village in Seke District, said people in his community tended to relieve themselves along river beds during the dry season.

“The boreholes that were drilled in the 1980s have broken down and only a few that were sunk in recent years still function while, due to poor rains, it is difficult to sink new wells. When the rains fall, people turn to the rivers for water to drink and use for cooking, thereby exposing themselves to the diseases carried by the human waste,” Shoniwa told IRIN.

fm/go/cb
source www.irinnews.org

MADAGASCAR: Legal aid clinics help rural women

Photo: Annelie Rozeboom/IRIN

Armandine Razanapako is now receiving child support payments from her ex-husband

MANANJARY,  – Legal aid clinics are playing an important role during Madagascar’s current political and economic crisis, especially for poverty-hit rural women who are under-served by the country’s ailing judicial system.

In the southeast of Madagascar, women’s rights used to be defended in special village councils, called ‘anakavy amin-dreny’ (the “sisters and mothers”). Although the village chief was always male, he was obliged to discuss issues with the head woman and the “sisters and mothers” had the authority to punish abusive husbands or male relatives who refused to share inherited land.

While these traditional structures still exist, in modern Madagascar they have no real power to protect women from abuses and the official judicial system has done little to address the gap. While the country’s laws put women on an equal status with men, legal institutions lacked resources to implement legislation even before the crisis.

An assessment by the Women’s Legal Rights Initiative, a US Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded programme, described Madagascar’s justice sector as plagued by poverty and corruption: “There are not enough personnel, let alone trained personnel, or resources in the judicial system. There is only one forensic laboratory for the entire country; some police stations have neither paper nor typewriters.”

The situation has deteriorated further since Andry Rajoelina’s ousting of President Marc Ravalomanana in 2009. During two years of political deadlock, the police and the courts have virtually stopped functioning in some provinces due to lack of funding. The country is served by just 35 courts which are difficult for people in rural areas to reach. With illiteracy rates as high as 80 percent among rural women, even those who can make it to a court have difficulty understand the proceedings.

Local chiefs not the answer

Armandine Razanapako, 50, an inhabitant of Mananjary on the south-east coast, is a case in point. After she separated from her husband in 2006, he refused to pay child support for their three children. “I don’t have a job, and I had to pay school fees,” she said.

In Mananjary people usually turn to local chiefs to mediate in disputes, but in Razanapako’s case, they were not very helpful. “These men are good in resolving family quarrels, where everybody attends a meeting and talks. But when it comes to making a husband pay, he will have to take the family of the husband into consideration, so there was no concrete result,” she recalled.

These institutions have become the road to take for the poor…They contribute to peace in the rural communities and help people to overcome their fear of stepping into an office

Razanapako and her children tried to survive by walking 11km out of town to cut cloves during the weekends. Razanapako also washed clothes for neighbours and sold charcoal on the street. Finally, the head of her `fokotano’ or neighbourhood advised her to go to Trano Arozo, a legal aid clinic housed in a cramped building next to the central market, where groups of women try to make a living selling vegetables.

“I wasn’t afraid to go there, as I was only asking for the rights of my children,” she said. “I went on 17 June and on 20 June I got money.” Now, when neighbours in similar situations ask her what she did to make her husband pay up, she sends them to Trano Arozo.

Set up by local NGO Fiantso in 2007 with funding from the UN Development Programme, the Netherlands-based Inter-church Organization for Development (ICCO), and the Ministry of Justice, Trano Arozo was southeastern Madagascar’s first legal aid clinic.

In 2008, Fiantso set up two more such clinics in Manakara and Farafangana and in 2010, three more were opened in the south of the country with funding from the European Union. The clinics are under the supervision of the Ministry of Justice, but managed by Fiantso.

Justice within reach

According to Amélie Razafindrahasy of Fiantso, the purpose of the clinics is to ensure that justice is within reach, especially for women. “Victims are often poor, and don’t have the means to travel far to reach authorities. As they are scared, they often prefer to stay silent. The clinics help them on their way,” she said.

Getting fathers to pay child support is one of the main tasks of the Legal Aid Clinic in Mananjary where about 75 percent of clients are women. “The problem is that the men don’t have a lot of money either. We negotiate with them about how much they can pay; once they agree, they both sign,” Ratsimbaharisoa explained. “If he signs, and doesn’t pay up, we’ll send them on to the real court, but this rarely happens.”

The clinic’s legal advisers serve about 50 clients a month and deal with marital problems as well as disputes over land rights and unpaid loans. Staff also do outreach programmes in the local community, organizing meetings at schools and villages and informing people about their legal rights.

“People don’t know their rights, but they change when they get the right information, ” Ratsimbaharisoa said.

“These institutions have become the road to take for the poor…They contribute to peace in the rural communities and help people to overcome their fear of stepping into an office.”

ar/ks/cb source www.irinnews.org