Losing women's rights

The Dominican Republic has added a clause to its constitution effectively prohibiting abortion. But Dr. Milton Cordero, according to a DR1 article, notes that approximately 90,000 abortions occur in the Dominican Republic annually, contributing to the third leading cause of maternal death. These are mainly self-induced, or at the hands of an untrained practitioner.

I know from my lifelong work in public health (maternal and child health, family planning and HIV/AIDS) that those abortions which were previously done by a trained physician are now likely to go underground. The Dominican Republic in 2000 already had about 150 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births - higher than many of its peers in the Caribbean and Latin America. One can expect more deaths of pregnant women if clandestine abortion becomes the norm.

According to an article online in Latina, Aldrian Almonte, president of the Dominican Gynecology and Obstetrics Society has warned that the number of maternal deaths will increase considerably once the new laws are enforced and women are no longer able to gain access to safe and medically supervised abortions. Even if the pregnancy endangers a woman’s life, abortion will no longer be a feasible option for physicians. “I would like the honorable legislators to tell me: What are we going to do before the presence of a woman with severe eclampsia, convulsing in any emergency room around the country? What must we do, see her die to protect ourselves from the repercussions this law stipulates?” Almonte asked.

According to Dominican Today (April 29, 2009), the national focal point for the UNDP Human Development Report, Miguel Ceara Hatton, has further said that the new Constitution excludes the women’s right to life and encourages the incidence of clandestine abortions and maternal deaths in the country.

The work of the UN's agencies to educate about and promote safe women's reproductive health must continue in support of women's reproductive rights in the D.R., while the draconian new policies are reviewed by the country's people.

UNESCO Launches World Digital Library

Bravo to UNESCO which, with 32 partner institutions, under the guidance of James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, today launched the Bibliothèque Numérique Mondiale (BNM), or World Digital Library (WDL). The library will offer on the website http://www.wdl.org/ the world's accumulated knowledge in seven languages for students everywhere. Adding to the six official languages of the UN (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish), the site includes materials in Portuguese. It will feature unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world, and will include manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs. It will provide unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.

The library has started with about 1,200 documents and their explanations from scholars. It is designed to accommodate an unlimited number of such texts, charts and illustrations from as many countries and libraries as want to contribute. The digital library's main server is also in Washington, but officials said plans are underway for regional servers around the world.

According to the UNESCO website, the WDL was developed by a team at the Library of Congress. Technical assistance was provided by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina of Alexandria, Egypt. Institutions contributing content and expertise to the WDL include national libraries and cultural and educational institutions in Brazil, Egypt, China, France, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The digital library's main server is in Washington, but plans are underway for regional servers around the world.

Current offerings include rubbings of oracle bones from the National Library of China, delicate drawings of court life from the National Diet Library of Japan and a 13th-century "Devil's Bible" from the National Library of Sweden. Each is accompanied by a brief explanation of its content and significance. The documents have been scanned onto the site directly, in their original languages, but the explanations appear in all seven of the site's official languages.

Users can sort through the information in several ways. They can ask what was going on anywhere in the world in, say, science or literature during the 4th century B.C., for instance. They can look up the history of a certain topic over the centuries in China alone, or in China and North America. By cross-referencing, a user can see how one area of the world compared with another at any given time. Materials also can be viewed by Place, Time, Topic, Type of Item and Institution.

This phenomenal site adds to work being done through Google and several universities to make books available online, and to the collaborative effort by Wikipedia in producing an encyclopedia of the world's knowledge.

Reflections

2009 is a real year of change for America and US-UN relations and also now for UNA-USA. Dr. Thomas J. Miller, recently named UNA-USA's new president, will take his position on May 11. He's a former U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia & Herzegovina and to Greece, taught at George Mason University, and, most recently, was CEO of Plan International (formerly Foster Parents Plan), a large non-profit with headquarters in the UK which works with children and their families. Tom is an advocate of the Model UN Program, having established one in Washington, DC, and another in Bosnia & Herzegovina.

The National Convention, scheduled for June 12-14 in Washington, DC, will give an opportunity for UNA members, Council of Organization members, and others from throughout the country to meet and get to know him. Chapter / National Relations will be an important topic for discussion, and I am especially interested in the development of outreach to students through the Student Alliance program, which is being revamped. I understand that Tom is a strong advocate for Chapters, and plans to visit many in the coming months. In June I'll be stepping down from four years as a Middle Atlantic Representative to the Council of Chapters and Divisions Steering Committee, but will remain active with the Southern New York State Division of UNA. For more, see http://www.unausa.org/ and http://www.unasouthernny.org/

UNA-USA, like most non-profits, is experiencing shortfalls in fundraising. How to take advantage of the new national spirit toward working multilaterally is bound to be a major focus of discussions at the Convention.

Meanwhile, the Public-Private Alliance Foundation is planning an event on ethanol, especially sugar-cane based ethanol, that will take place at the UN on May 7. This will be PPAF's third annual Partners Against Poverty event, which will bring together people from the business world, UN agencies, non-profits, academic institutions and foundations and others. The purpose is to develop new business models that will contribute to reaching the Millennium Developmen Goals and help people lift themselves out of poverty. The website is: http://www.ppafoundation.org/ Focusing on a small, high-level group of participants, PPAF expects the event to result in practical actions toward sustainable development that will benefit local economies and boost peoples' incomes as well as improving availability of biofuel.

PPAF's Executive Director, David Stillman, will speak at a UNA Council of Organizations event at the Church Center for the UN on April 23. The panel's topic is The Changing Nature of Corporate-Civil Society Partnerships in the Global Economic Downturn. Olajobi Makinwa, Civil Society Coordinator, UN Global Compact will also speak. The third speaker is Tom Kadala, President of ResearchPAYS, which is partnering with PPAF on the Ethanol event.

It is fascinating to be involved in work that can directly affect the top universal issue of climate change through promoting sustainable development, and at the same time improve lives of families. Corporate social responsibility, research-based decision-making, ecology, globalism, technology, family economics, the global financial crisis, social and cultural preservation, two billion people living in poverty, international flow of capital and goods are all relevant topics. Passions run high around all these issues and their political and economic ramifications, and the resulting debates and actions are vital to our future.

UN Consolidated Appeal for Funding for Madagascar

The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has issued a Consolidated Appeal Process for Madagascar - Flash Appeal , in the wake of the ongoing poverty of this "least developed" country and the political turmoil of the past several months. Drought in some areas, cyclones in others contribute to the need for significant food aid. The Appeal indicates:

"The current delays and/or the suspension of government programmes, combined with the reduced capacity of the administration due to the sudden change in leadership and the suspension of some international assistance, has severely curtailed the current Government’s capacity to meet the basic needs of the population. To prevent the deterioration of the humanitarian situation, the Madagascar Humanitarian Country Team is seeking US$ 35,732,550 to save lives, bolster social safety nets and, should the political situation allow, support time-critical recovery. This appeal will be revised as the situation evolves and further assessment and surveillance data becomes available."

What can an individual do? (1) Look at the list of organizations that form the common appeal, and if you have a connection with any, make your voice heard. (2) Track the political situation in Madagascar by signing into Google Tracker and keep informed. (3) Contribute to any of these organizations, or to the Public-Private Alliance Foundation, which works with Madagascar as one of its focus countries (http://www.ppafoundation.org/ ) Only through being informed can we make a difference. I took the photos above in Madagascar in 2004. Some of these children were old enough to be in school, but school wasn't available to them.

Asia Society Hosts International Education Prizes

I am very happy to report on the March 25 awards luncheon at the Asia Society's New York office which celebrated the final winners of the Goldman Sachs Foundation Prizes for Excellence in International Education. It is exciting to learn about such wonderful efforts around the country, which can and do serve as models for others. The Asia Society is a leading force in developing materials, programs and curricula to bring world education to America. (See this blog's posting for November 12, 2008 for more.)

Vivian Stewart, Asia Society Vice President, discussed the impact the prizes have been having since their inception in 2003. A video provided highlights of the John Stanford International School in Seattle, which was also represented on a panel by Karen Kodama, Founding Principal. (Watch this brief video and you can see more on edutopia.com ) There students learn Math and Science in Japanese or Spanish, depending on the track they choose.

Vishakha N. Desia, Asia Society President, moderated the panel, which also included Lynette Cletson, Managing Editor of The Root, Washington Post; Robert D. Harmats, Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs International, and Gene Wilson, Executive Director of the Council of Chief state School Officers.
Award winners by category were:
Elementary/Middle School: The Independence Charter School, Philadelphia. This is an urban public charter school which combines "two second language acquisition programs with an interdisciplinary curriculum, integrating traditions, literature, geography, economics and history."
High School: Bergen County Academies is a public, county-wide magnet technical school which is also certified as an International Baccalaureate program. Students take three or more years of a world language: French, Spanish, Latin or Mandarin.
District/State: The winner, the State of New Jersey, is involved in across-the-board curriculum redesign to "develop a world-class workforce by assisting the state's students to obtain the skills and education needed in a competitive global economy." This includes all nine areas of the curriculum: Visual and Performing Arts; Comprehensive Health and Physical Education; Language Arts Literacy; Mathematics; Science, Social Studies; World Languages; Technological Literacty; and Career Education and Consumer, Family and Life Skills.
Media / Technology: Co-recipients:
Google Lit Trips marries the written word with Google Earth imagery with nuggets of information about destinations or paths along the way. It's divided by grade level (K-5, 6-8, 9-12, HiEd). Having learned about this, I had to tour the site. I lived in Pakistan and worked with Afghan refugees, and was particularly intrigued by The Kite Runner and the sites that popped up in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Then I looked at The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and at Voltaire's Candide. What a way to learn!

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting has won for its Global Gateway , which provides teens and young adults with interactive information about important issues around the world. It tackles difficult subjects, such as "the water wars", and HIV/AIDS, as well as informing about conflicts and progress in various countries. My personal congratulations to Jon Sawyer, Executive Director of the Center and formerly the Washington correspondent for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Jon was traveling in Ethiopia (doubtless with a video crew) and could not attend the lunch. Many of the Center's videos are shown on Foreign Exchange with Daljit Dhaliwal (a Public Television show started by Fareed Zakaria), which I also recommend.

Thank you to the Asia Society and the Goldman Sachs Foundation for your important work on promoting global education. I found this event not only celebratory of good work (which led me to think -- why aren't many, many more schools and educators doing more?) but also a great opportunity to network.

For those who asked for The Journal News Newspaper in Education supplements on global issues which go to about 55,000 students, teachers and administrators in Westchester, Putnam and Rockland Counties, NY, or for the video series "Going Global with the UN," which now has 69 of its 70 videos on line, here are the links:
SUPPLEMENTS:
Peace Makes the World a Better Place (December 2006)
Shaping Global Citizens -- The United Nations Millennium Development Goals in Action: Targeting Hunger (October 2007)
Shaping Global Citizens -- The Power of Partnerships (February 2009)
VIDEOS:
Going Global with the UN Video Series

YPIC's Haiti Expedition Project Launched

Those of you who read the UNA Southern NY Division website will see a longer article about the Young Professionals for International Cooperation (YPIC) recent fundraiser to launch their Haiti Project. Congratulations to YPIC and all who were involved. On March 25, YPIC brought together over 140 members and friends for this launch, a cocktail party held at the 92Y Tribeca center. Please take a little time to read about YPIC's Flagship Program: The Haïti Expedition Project , which is worth supporting.

David Stillman and I greatly enjoyed the event (though we don't fit in the 21-40 age group). The slide show was both inviting and poignant. The program was just long enough to invigorate an audience to become involved. Conor Bohan spoke about HELP, the program he started, which gives scholarships to help some of the poorest Haitian students to attend college. Martina Bruno, a Haitian-American singer, treated the audience with "Summertime" and with a lively call-and-reponse piece.

On a personal note, I worked in Haiti in public health, most recently about 15 years ago; David has traveled there twice in the past three years, and is currently developing two projects related to Haiti. We were the lucky winners of two of the four pieces of artwork that were part of the silent auction -- both by Richard Rapoport, a peace artist whose website is http://www.peacefreedom.com/ The art pictured above I purchased at a street market in Port-au-Prince.

YPIC Chair Patricia Sacristan, VP Michele Chaplin, Kevin Jamison, director of YPIC's European Affairs Committee and members of several other committees were responsible for the excellent planning and implementation of the event. Brava and Bravo!