Increased persecution of homosexuals in Africa has drawn the attention of international funders recently. Western external funders are reported by the author to be considering making aid to African countries conditional on decriminalising homosexuality and upholding the rights of homosexual communities. While intended to show support for an otherwise vulnerable minority, the author suggests that withholding aid would have adverse effects on all Africans, including homosexual Africans. Threatening to withdraw foreign aid, it is argued, only reinforces the argument that homosexuality is a Western construct and would result in a local backlash. Further aid itself cannot be a tool for social justice given its roots in imequitable power relations. In contrast the author calls for an emerging movement that seeks to locate gender and sexuality, including that of homosexual people, within the broad spectrum of social and economic issues that affect all Africans.
Values, Policies and Rights
This study focuses on the African Mining Vision (AMV), which was adopted by the African Union in 2008, an agreement that seeks to shift mineral policy beyond a focus on extracting minerals and sharing revenue. Instead, it relates mineral policy to the transformation of Africa’s economies and views an industrialisation strategy anchored on minerals and other natural resources as critical for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, eradicating poverty and securing sustainable growth. The study looks at regulation of artisanal and smallscale mining in Africa, the increasing importance of corporate social responsibility initiatives in the mining sector, and perspectives on capturing, managing and sharing mineral revenue for the befit of all. It highlights the fact that policy design works best when instruments are available to carry it out, and for much of Africa, that plan remains part of the rhetoric of official declarations, dissociated from real policy. So far, the policy position of stakeholders, especially government, is limited to short-term responses to immediate concerns or focused on extracting and exporting unprocessed natural resources. The AMV and this report affirm the need for Africa to transform its mining sector from an enclave of raw material supplies to an integrated industry that will help drive the continent's socio-economic development.
April 2012 marked the start of South Africa's new five-year strategy on HIV, STIs and TB. The plan has several broad goals: to reduce new HIV infections by at least 50%; to start at least 80% of eligible patients on antiretroviral treatment; to reduce the number of new tuberculosis infections and deaths by 50%; to ensure a legal framework that protects and promotes human rights to support implementation of the plan; and to reduce self-reported stigma related to HIV and tuberculosis by at least 50%. Additionally, a major strategic objective of the plan will be to address the social and cultural barriers to HIV, sexually transmitted infection, and tuberculosis prevention and care. The plan states that key vulnerable populations (eg, women between the ages of 15 years and 24 years, people from low socioeconomic groups, and men who have sex with men) will be targeted with different but specific interventions under each goal to achieve maximum impact. The strategy endorses a new focus on tuberculosis (TB), which is much needed, as South Africa has 482,000 TB sufferers, 70% of whom are co-infected with HIV.
This report presents findings from a qualitative and quantitative survey of present and future efforts by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to improve global health. It examines these roles within the broader context of international development and foreign assistance. BRICS foreign assistance spending is still relatively small when compared to overall spending by the US and Western European countries, but in recent years it has been increasing rapidly. Today, among the BRICS, China is by far the largest contributor to foreign assistance, and South Africa is estimated to be the smallest by a significant margin. Brazil and Russia prioritise health within their broader assistance agendas, while China, India and South Africa tend to focus on other issue areas. Though their health commitments vary significantly in both size and scope, each of the BRICS has contributed to global health through financing, capacity building, dramatically improved access to affordable medicines, and development of new tools and strategies. In this context, BRICS policymakers themselves have recognised their potential to have even greater global health impact when they committed in 2011 to ‘support and undertake inclusive global public health cooperation projects, including through South-South and triangular co-operation’.
At the 56th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, held in April 2012, the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development report that the Commission failed to adopt agreed conclusions protecting women’s rights for reasons of ‘safeguarding traditional values’. This failure comes at the expense of human rights and fundamental freedoms of women, according to this statement of a number of feminist and women's rights organisations in the Forum. These organisations reject any proposed re-opening of negotiations on the already established international agreements on women's human rights and call on all governments to demonstrate their commitment to promote, protect and fulfil human rights and fundamental freedoms of women. Customs, tradition or religious considerations must not be tolerated to justify discrimination and violence against women and girls, whether committed by State authorities or by non-state actors. In particular, the statement urges governments to ensure that the health and human rights of girls and women are secured and reaffirmed at the upcoming 2012 Commission on Population and Development and the International Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). Any future international negotiations must move forward implementation of policies and programmes that secure the human rights of girls and women.
While the sixth World Water Forum took place in Marseille in March 2012, an Alternative World Water Forum (FAME) also took place in parallel in the French city. Promoting a motto of ‘Water belongs to everyone’, the trade unions, corporate watchdog groups and environmentalists behind FAME accused the World Water Forum of failing to adequately address issues of universal water access and sustainability, and of rather promoting expensive private sector technologies for safe water. The World Water Forum declaration did include commitments to speed up access to safe drinking water and sanitation for all, focusing on the most vulnerable. The Alternative Forum argued, however, that the Forum declaration failed to reflect a full commitment to the rights to water and sanitation, according to the United Nations special rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.
The author of this article hails the 2012 World Development Report (WDR) as a watershed moment: it is the first time that the World Bank has devoted its flagship publication to gender. But she argues that the report leaves the Bank failing to face up to its role in perpetuating policies that harm women, and is seriously limited in its approach to women’s movements, markets and households. Although the report cites self-identified feminist work liberally, its own understanding of feminism as a transnational social movement is poor. The report also fails to mention the historical background of the Bank in gender and development, a convenient oversight given its inconsistent role in the struggle for gender equality in the past. Another key omission in the WDR argued by the author is any sustained analysis of gender and the current financial crisis, and the author casts doubt on the Bank’s assumption that free market capitalism brings about gender transformation. While the report advocates for women’s social networks and for women’s independent control of income, it defines gender equality as ideally achieved within sharing partnerships in nuclear male-headed families. This leads to serious tension over the meaning of gender empowerment.
According to this article, recent studies suggest that women stuck in financially dependent relationships are at greatest risk for HIV infection in African countries. Women afraid of violence and abuse, stigmatisation, being labelled adulterous or being abandoned may be too frightened or intimidated to pursue testing and treatment. Also, the extra costs - US$2 or more - to travel to clinics are prohibitive. In effect, poor and unemployed women have been forced by men to forfeit their reproductive rights in issues pertaining to sex and protection from HIV. Women who are dependent on men for their livelihood are forced to have unprotected sex with their husbands or partners, even if they know they have cheated on them. Sex workers allege that married men especially from the middle class and the upper classes are willing to pay more for sex without a condom. The author concludes that silence on this topic in the media and the research community is a powerful ally in male domination of women economically and socially, and a driver in the spread of HIV.
Uganda’s notorious 'Anti-Homosexuality' Bill - proposed first in 2009 – has been re-tabled at a parliamentary session in Kampala. The Bill contains harsh provisions arguing for the death penalty for homosexuals and stiff prison sentences for their supporters which, if introduced, would threaten the safety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people and human rights activists in the country. It is reported that both government and opposition members of parliament clapped in support of reintroduction of the Bill, which comes a few days after the first anniversary of the murder of prominent LGBTI rights defender David Kato, killed on 26 January 2011. Front Line Defenders reiterates its grave concern in this article that the passing of the Bill would further hamper the work of public health workers and human rights defenders who work with LGBTI people. the article also raises concern that rhetoric and media coverage around the Bill could incite further violence against human rights defenders working on LGBTI issues.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has denied claims that partial guidelines for the implementation of Articles 9 and 10 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) on Regulation of the contents of tobacco products and tobacco product disclosures will have a negative effect on burley tobacco producers. The International Tobacco Growers Association (ITGA), has fought against the adoption of the guidelines, arguing that reducing the demand for burley tobacco could shrink economies, employment and incomes, such as in Malawi where tobacco contributes about 13% to the Malawi economy and accounts for 60% of foreign currency earnings. [Contrary to tobacco industry claims, the guidelines do not recommend a ban on burley tobacco or any other type of tobacco but do regulate flavourings that would attract target grioups such as young people to smoke. Cigarettes containing burley continue to be sold in jurisdictions where strong restrictions on flavourings are in place].