Last week the Honduran government inaugurated a truth commission to investigate the June 2009 coup. The commission will “document human rights abuses related to the coup, address grievances where they are found and consider reforms to prevent similar incidents from happening again.” Human rights groups have, however, criticized the commission. Committee for the Families of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras (COFADEH) states, “the only purpose of the Lobo commission is to support the Honduran regime’s continued efforts to whitewash those responsible for the coup and its violent aftermath.” Since last year’s coup, a powerful nonviolent resistance movement has emerged. Women make up the majority of the movement and play a critical leadership role. The resistance is united not just by opposition to the regime but also a positive vision of a new Honduras, characterized by this slogan: “Por un constituyente no excluyente” (For a constitutional convention that doesn’t exclude). The regime has responded with brutal repression. As of last August, women’s groups documented 249 cases of violations of women’s human rights, including beatings, sexual assault and gang rapes by police. To date, COFADEH has registered 47 assassinations of anti-coup activists. On May 10, the U.N. Human Rights Council urged protection for Honduran journalists after seven were killed in the past six weeks. The truth commission has no mandate to examine these current human rights violations.

On May 3rd, American Chris Flaherty will commence a hunger strike to pressure the US government to call for the immediate release of Birkutan Mideksa from wrongful imprisonment in Ethiopia. Mideska is Chairperson of the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party of Ethiopia, a single mother of a 5 year old daughter, caregiver for her 74 year old mother, and was among dozens of opposition leaders, journalists and civil society workers arrested following anti-government demonstrations in  2005. After spending nearly two years in jail Mideska was pardoned but then re-arrested in December 2008. On January 9, 2010, the prime minister of Ethiopia stated that any discussion of her release was “a dead issue.” Meanwhile, her arbitrary detention is recognized by UN Human Rights Commission. In a report released on March 23, 2010 Human Rights Watch stated that the Ethiopian government is waging a sustained attack on political opponents, journalists, and rights activists in advance of May 2010 parliamentary elections. When announcing his hunger strike Chris Flaherty (who produced a documentary, Migration of Beauty, depicting the grassroots movement of Ethiopian taxi drivers in DC who used their U.S. citizenship to impose foreign aid restrictions against their native country) implored Ethiopian Americans that “you must instigate the government… in the Diaspora you hold a responsibility.” Freebirtukan.org is focusing it’s grassroots mobilization efforts on Ethiopian mothers in America.

On April 13 – 15 the first multi-party elections since 1986 took place in Sudan. The results will be announced on Apr. 22 in Khartoum — preliminary reports suggest that the president incumbent of the ruling National Congress Party, Omar al-Bashir, is leading nationwide. However, two international observation missions have issued reports that the elections did not meet international standards and Sudanese observer groups reported widespread electoral rigging and political oppression. Leading human rights groups are calling on the Obama Administration to acknowledge that the presidential election will not reflect the legitimate choice of the Sudanese people. The past 20 years in Sudan have been dominated by warfare that has starkly divided the country on racial, religious, and regional grounds; displaced an estimated four million people; and killed an estimated two million people. The lack of investment during this time, particularly in South Sudan, has meant a generation lacking basic health services, education, and jobs. This weekend I attended the screening of a powerful documentary, Rebuilding Hope, that follows three “Lost Boys” – Gabriel Bol, Koor, and Garang – from the US to Sudan to find surviving family members, discover what the current situation is in South Sudan, and determine how they can help their community rebuild after devastating civil war. I recommend this film to all!

Tomorrow marks the end of Women’s History Month. At the same time as we’re honoring women’s past contributions, new chapters in history are being written. In America, the most recent achievement for and by women was the passage of healthcare reform. What else will 2010 hold for women? There are high hopes for the US’ ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Also known as The Treaty for the Rights of Women, CEDAW sets a universal standard for women’s equal political, civil, economic, cultural and social rights. It was adopted by the UN in 1979 and as of March 2010, 186 countries have ratified it. The US is only one of seven countries – including Sudan, Somalia, and Iran – to have not ratified the treaty. After years of stalemate, President Obama put CEDAW back on the international treaty agenda. However there is widespread agreement that ratification will require overcoming huge legislative challenges in the Senate. An effort is currently underway by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to ensure that the treaty is ratified in 2010.

This month’s issue of Smithsonian magazine highlights the systematic demolition of the city of Kashgar in East Turkestan, also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. Kashgar is a 1,000 year old city that is home to the Uyghur people. Uyghurs are ethnically and culturally a Turkic people who practice a moderate form of Sufi Islam. Heavy-handed repression by the Chinese government has created a dire human rights situation in East Turkestan that includes arbitrary detention, torture, and execution; severe discrimination in the areas of healthcare and employment; religious repression; forced abortion; the removal of Uyghur as a language in schools; and the forcible transfer of young Uyghur women and men to eastern China at the same as government policies bring millions of Chinese migrants to East Turkestan. The systematic demolition of Kashgar is considered yet another sinister attempt “to deprive the Uyghur of their main symbol of cultural identity.” Read this speech by Rebiya Kadeer to learn what “the Mother of the Uyghur Nation” had to say after deadly demonstrations killed hundreds of Uyghur in July 2009.

Photo credit: Associated Press Uyghur women protest

This week I saw a provocative ad at a bus stop in my Washington, DC neighborhood. A picture of George W. Bush gazing out an airplane window alongside a battered piece of cardboard with “AIDS is DC’s Katrina” scrawled across it. The ad is intended to prod President Obama to act on AIDS, specifically in DC where HIV prevalence rates are at least 3% (higher than in Lagos, Nigeria). This video reinforces the message that “56,000 new US infections each year symbolize neglect and indifference.” Race played a critical role in the devastation in New Orleans and it is a central factor in the HIV epidemic in the US. African-Americans make up 12% of the population yet account for more than 45% of new infections and 46% of people currently living with HIV. AIDS is currently the leading cause of death for Black women ages 25 to 34. On March 10th –National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day – set your phone or computer to alert you every 35 minutes. This is how often an American woman tests positive for HIV. Hurricane Katrina illustrated that natural disasters are neither gender- nor color-blind. The same is true of HIV/AIDS.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation Ad Campaign

In honor of Valentine’s Day I attended a benefit production of Eve Ensler’s award-winning play The Vagina Monologues. This year the V-day global campaign focus is “Stop Raping our Greatest Resource: Power to Women in the DRC.” Over 5.4 million people have died in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since 1998 – currently 45,000 people die each month. Thousands of women experience brutal sexual violence on a daily basis. Thankfully journalists like Nicholas Kristof are keeping the DRC in the news – most recently with this moving video of a Message for President Obama. However, as one Congolese woman says, “we speak but nothing changes.” The Enough Project highlights how our demand for conflict minerals – the material in the cellphone in your pocket – fuels this deadly war. Congolese women and men risk their lives so we can talk on our cellphones, check our email and update our Facebook status. What will we do for them?

When this woman would not be quiet in the face of her perpetrators, they shot her three times. Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The rights of those serving within the ranks of the U.S. military (or employed by its contractors) made the news this week. On Monday, the 2011 Defense budget proposal was released and included prohibitions against defense contracts with companies that deny court hearings for sexual assault victims. The prohibitions mirror Sen. Al Franken’s Anti-Rape Amendment, which was adopted in December in spite of opposition from the Defense Department. On Tuesday, during a Senate hearing top U.S. military officers endorsed the gradual repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” the policy which “forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.” Controversial statements by Sen. John McCain speak to some of the issues at hand: “Many gay and lesbian Americans are serving admirably in our Armed forces, even giving their Lives so that we and others can know the blessings of peace…{this is} military life which is characterized by its own laws, rules, customs and traditions.” How much longer will the U.S. military exempt itself from the very values that it purports to defend?

Photo Credit: Johnny Symons, Ask Not

My thoughts and prayers are with the millions of people impacted by the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on Tuesday January 13. Print and online media is awash with stories and images of “one of the worst ever natural disasters in the western hemisphere.” No matter how many articles I read or how much live footage I watch the utter devastation, pain, and suffering are difficult to comprehend.

Amidst the endless stream of information detailing the destruction and tireless relief efforts there is also a plethora of suggestions of how and where to send donations, including information about the largest text-based fundraising campaign in history. As with most life-threatening emergencies there has been an immediate outpouring of support (an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review discusses why sudden crises pull heartstrings and loosen purse strings more than persistent, chronic conditions).

The media coverage is focused, in large part, on the current conditions, with only occasional reference to the historical and structural injustices that magnified the earthquake’s devastating impact. A provocative audio slideshow, published online in the July 2009 issue of Guernica Magazine, captures the reality that the current devastation is best understood as the manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence. A May 2009 Times of London article points to the degree to which Haiti’s status as the poorest country in the western hemisphere – mired in historic debt, stricken by flood and famine, and rife with violence and abuse – was simply accepted.

It is critical that the international community confronts these historical and structural injustices as it considers the help that Haiti needs. An online post in Foreign Policy magazine calls on the international community to cancel Haiti’s debt. The Association for Women’s Rights in Development highlights the specific experiences and needs of Haitian women during this humanitarian catastrophe. If we are serious about Haiti’s recovery, we need to be as committed to addressing the country’s systematic injustices and inequalities as we are to emergency relief.

An article in January 4th’s New York Times presents Uganda as the epicenter of the debate on homosexuality in Africa, with American groups on both sides – the Christian right and gay activists – directing support and money to the country. This article comes in the wake of the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill which mandates death for homosexuals, and the imprisonment of anyone who fails to report within 24 hours the identities of everyone they know who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, or who supports human rights for people who are. Since the bill was first introduced on October 14 there has been widespread debate about the role that American evangelicals played in its drafting, and the influence they wield in the general debate over homosexuality in Africa. A recent report by Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian who went undercover for six months to chronicle the relationship between the African anti-homosexual movement and American evangelicals, argues that conservative evangelicals have been immensely successful in depicting the movement for gay equality as the neocolonialist agenda of an imperial West that seeks to undermine African values. Religious and political leaders quote American evangelicals like Rick Warren – saying that “homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right” – to justify discriminatory policies and practices. Warren only recently publicly condemned the proposed legislation through an “encylical video” to the Pastors of Uganda. Meanwhile, on December 16 the BBC launched an online debate: “Should homosexuals face execution?” A senior BBC executive later apologized for treating the execution of gays as a legitimate topic for debate. Personally, as I attempt to discern the growing number of voices in the current debate over gay rights in Uganda, and Africa more broadly, I am particularly struck by this New York Times quote by a gay man at a club in Uganda: “It’s not homosexuality that it is imported. It’s homophobia.”

(Photo credit: Marc Hofer for The New York Times)