Saudi women 'kept in childhood'

Saudi women are being kept in perpetual childhood so male relatives can exercise "guardianship" over them, the Human Rights Watch group has said.

The New York-based group says Saudi women have to obtain permission from male relatives to work, travel, study, marry or even receive health care.

Their access to justice is also severely constrained, it says.

The group says the Saudi establishment sacrifices basic human rights to maintain male control over women.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive.

Saudi clerics see the guardianship of women's honour as a key to the country's social and moral order.

'No progress'

The report, Perpetual Minors: Human Rights Abuses Stemming from Male Guardianship and Sex Segregation in Saudi Arabia, draws on more than 100 interviews with Saudi women.

Farida Deif, women's rights researcher for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch, said: "Saudi women won't make any progress until the government ends the abuses that stem from these misguided policies."

It's astonishing that the Saudi government denies adult women the right to make decisions for themselves but holds them criminally responsible for their actions at puberty Farida Deif, Human Rights Watch

The report says that Saudi women are denied the legal right to make even trivial decisions for their children - women cannot open bank accounts for children, enrol them in school, obtain school files or travel with their children without written permission from the child's father.

Human Rights Watch says that Saudi women are prevented from accessing government agencies that have no established female sections unless they have a male representative.

The need to establish separate office spaces for women is a disincentive to hiring female employees, and female students are often relegated to unequal facilities with unequal academic opportunities, the report says.

Male guardianship over adult women also contributes to their risk of exposure to violence within the family as victims of violence find it difficult to seek protection or redress from the courts.

Social workers, physicians and lawyers say that it is nearly impossible to remove guardianship from male guardians who are abusive, the group says.

"It's astonishing that the Saudi government denies adult women the right to make decisions for themselves but holds them criminally responsible for their actions at puberty," said Ms Deif.

"For Saudi women, reaching adulthood brings no rights, only responsibilities."

The Globalization of Baby-Making

International Herald Tribune
The globalization of baby-making
By Ellen Goodman
Friday, April 11, 2008

By now we all have a story about a job outsourced beyond our reach in the global economy. My favorite is about the California publisher who hired two reporters in India to cover the Pasadena city government. Really.

There are times as well when the offshoring of jobs takes on a quite literal meaning. When the labor we are talking about is, well, labor.

In the last few months we've had a full nursery of international stories about surrogate mothers. Hundreds of couples are crossing borders in search of lower-cost ways to fill the family business. In turn, there's a new coterie of international workers who are gestating for a living.

Many of the stories about the globalization of baby production begin in India, where the government seems to regard this as, literally, a growth industry. In the little town of Anand, dubbed "The Cradle of the World," 45 women were recently on the books of a local clinic. For the production and delivery of a child, they will earn $5,000 to $7,000, a decade's worth of women's wages in rural India.

But even in America, some women, including Army wives, are supplementing their income by contracting out their wombs. They have become surrogate mothers for wealthy couples from European countries that ban the practice.

This globalization of baby-making comes at the peculiar intersection of a high reproductive technology and a low-tech workforce. The biotech business was created in the same petri dish as Baby Louise, the first IVF baby. But since then, we've seen conception outsourced to egg donors and sperm donors. We've had motherhood divided into its parts from genetic mother to gestational mother to birth mother and now contract mother.

We've also seen the growth of an international economy. Frozen sperm is flown from one continent to another. And patients have become medical tourists, searching for cheaper healthcare whether it's a new hip in Thailand or IVF treatment in South Africa that comes with a photo safari thrown in for the same price. Why not then rent a foreign womb?

I don't make light of infertility. The primal desire to have a child underlies this multinational Creation Inc. On one side, couples who choose surrogacy want a baby with at least half their own genes. On the other side, surrogate mothers, who are rarely implanted with their own eggs any longer, can believe that the child they bear and deliver is not really theirs.

As one woman put it, "We give them a baby and they give us much-needed money. It's good for them and for us." A surrogate in Anand used the money to buy a heart operation for her son. Another raised a dowry for her daughter.

Nevertheless, there is - and there should be - something uncomfortable about a free-market approach to baby-making. It's easier to accept surrogacy when it's a gift from one woman to another. But we rarely see a rich woman become a surrogate for a poor family. Indeed, in Third World countries, some women sign these contracts with a fingerprint because they are illiterate.

For that matter, we have not yet had stories about the contract workers for whom pregnancy was a dangerous occupation, but we will. What obligation does a family that simply contracted for a child have to its birth mother? What control do - should - contractors have over their "employee's" lives while incubating "their" children? What will we tell the offspring of this international trade?

It's the commercialism that is troubling. Some things we cannot sell no matter how good "the deal." We cannot, for example, sell ourselves into slavery. We cannot sell our children. But the surrogacy business comes perilously close to both of these. And international surrogacy tips the scales.

So, these borders we are crossing are not just geographic ones. They are ethical ones. Today the global economy sends everyone in search of the cheaper deal as if that were the single common good. But in the biological search, humanity is sacrificed to the economy and the person becomes the product. And, step by step, we come to a stunning place in our ancient creation story. It's called the marketplace.

Washington Post Writers Group

Rowling demands action in Dafur

Darfuri children have drawn powerful images of the war around them

CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEO

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has joined fellow children's writers in calling for greater protection for children living in war-torn Darfur.

An open letter signed by 14 authors, including best-selling US writer Judy Blume and Michael Morpugo, declares: "It is time to change the narrative."

"The world needs to wake up. For too long it has let these children suffer. Our politicians need to act on Darfur."

The conflict in Darfur, a region of Sudan, is now in its fifth year.

More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since rebels took up arms in 2003, according to the UN. Two million have fled their homes.

'Caught in crossfire'

Sunday marks Global Day for Darfur, with protesters around the world calling on the international community to take further action to end the crisis.

"The children of Darfur didn't ask for this war, but are living their days caught in the crossfire of reverberating bullets," the open letter continues.

"They must be allowed to be children again. Despite the daily terror they face, they still have hopes and dreams.

"The world needs to act now to give the children of Darfur a future."

Germany's Cornelia Funke and RL Stine, the American author of the Goosebumps series, are among the writers taking part. Their plea includes calls for an immediate ceasefire and the full deployment of a UN peacekeeping force.

Human rights groups estimate that more than a million Sudanese children have been caught up in the bloodshed, displacement and killing in the region.

Hollywood stars Matt Damon, Thandie Newton and George Clooney are also taking part in Sunday's global protest.

"Days like this matter because they keep what is happening in the eyes of the international community," said Clooney, a UN "messenger of peace".

"If we all raise our voices the international community will have to listen and respond."

Child death raises tough questions

By Gary Duffy
BBC News, Sao Paulo

In a country such as Brazil, which lives with high levels of crime and violence, it usually takes a particularly shocking event to have an impact across the country.

Some experts believe extensive media coverage has led to copycat cases

The tragic death of five-year-old Isabella de Oliveira Nardoni is one such case.

For days the crime has been grabbing headlines in all the main Brazilian papers, leading the front pages of the weekly news magazines, and taking up hours of television reports.

It initially appeared that the little girl was thrown to her death from the sixth floor apartment in Sao Paulo belonging to her father and stepmother, where she had been spending the weekend.

However, preliminary tests indicated that she may also have been strangled beforehand, and suffered other injuries.

Blood was found in the apartment and there was a hole in the wire safety netting that covered the window. She died just a few minutes after being discovered.

'Inexplicable act'

"The unacceptable death of Isabella," proclaimed the headline on a report from the weekly news magazine Istoe.

"Extroverted, lively and gracious, Isabella de Oliveira Nardoni, aged five, was the centre of attention at family reunions," it said.

The case has prompted Brazilians to reflect on the kind of cruelty that adults seem capable of inflicting on children

Isabella wanted to be a ballerina, the magazine reported.

"How did someone commit an inexplicable act like this?" asked the magazine Epoca.

Her father Alexandre, 29, says he believes that his daughter was killed by an intruder, while he was helping his wife bring their other children from their car in the garage in the basement of the building.

However, both he and his wife Anna Carolina Jatoba have been held by police for questioning over the death.

Whoever was responsible for Isabella's death, the case has prompted Brazilians to reflect on the kind of cruelty that adults seem capable of inflicting on children.

Only last month police here filed charges against 49-year-old businesswoman Silvia Calabresi, who is accused of torturing a 12-year-old girl.

When police in the city of Goiania found the girl she was handcuffed to a staircase and showing signs of torture and ill-treatment.

Ms Calabresi later said in a television interview that she didn't think she was torturing the child but was "educating" her.

Greater awareness

Brazil is not alone in dealing with the consequences of extreme acts of violence against the most vulnerable members of society, and there are indications of some worrying trends.

The risk is that if we become used to this type of event I think we lose a very valuable part of our humanity Ivonise Fernandes da Motta Psychology professor

Research carried out by the University of Sao Paulo showed that domestic violence against children had risen by 75% in the first years of this century.

Professor Ivonise Fernandes da Motta of the Department of Clinical Psychology at the University of Sao Paulo, says this increase may be explained by the greater awareness in society, and a willingness to report what has happened to the authorities.

She also highlights the speed and sometimes sensationalist nature of reports in the media as a reason why society is much more conscious of this kind of crime. Even so, she says, such cruelty still has the capacity to shock Brazilian society.

"We have indications that this is increasing and there is a danger that situations like this will become more common. The risk is that if we become used to this type of event I think we lose a very valuable part of our humanity," she warned.

One expert from a referral centre of Victims of Violence in the Institute of Sedes Sapientae in Sao Paulo says the greater awareness may have led to others copying particular acts of cruelty.

The violence is of different types and becoming more specific and more sophisticated, says general co-ordinator Dalka Chaves de Almeida Ferrari.

"If a crime happens of a particular type in another place and it is exposed in the media, then in one or two weeks something similar will happen here," she says.

"I think that this communication - which is much more direct today - ends up freeing people who wish to participate in some violence, that have a wish to do something.

"Related to the case of this girl [Isabella] you see how many similar cases have emerged," she said.

Far from unique

In one case since Isabella's death a baby was thrown out of a window in a house in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, and is being treated in hospital.

But it is also the cases which do not always make the headlines which worry those who work in this area.

"I think violence which ends up in death always shocks, but I think the violence that is more psychological, which happens every day and decreases the self-esteem of children or uses physical discipline still needs to change a lot in Brazil," says Dalka de Almeida Ferrari.

While the exact circumstances of Isabella de Oliveira Nardoni's death remain uncertain, part of the enormous tragedy of her story is that it is far from unique.

Amen

Posters of Scorsone and Drueding at www.SDposters.com

Chad 'orphans' to return to homes

The government of Chad has given permission for 103 children who were caught up in a trafficking scandal to be returned home, Unicef says.

Six French aid workers were convicted last year of trying to kidnap the 103 children from Chad, saying they thought they were orphans from Darfur.

The children will be returned to their families from an orphanage in Chad as soon as possible, Unicef says.

The aid workers have been returned to France to serve out their jail terms.

They said they had been tricked into thinking the children they were preparing to fly to France were Sudanese orphans from Darfur.

However, most of the children were found to be from Chad, which borders the war-torn western Sudanese region, and had parents who were still alive.

See more on this scandal:

allAfrica.com

Anger at Chad ‘abduction’ fiasco may shut door on Africa adoptions

Protest over Chad child scandal

Chad court jails French aid staff

Sydney police free sex captives

Australian police say they have broken up an international sex-trafficking ring after rescuing 10 South Korean women from Sydney brothels.

Five people have been arrested and charged with offences including people trafficking and debt bondage.

Police said the women were lured to Australia and forced to work up to 20 hours a day in legal Sydney brothels.

They had agreed to work in the sex industry, but were deceived about conditions, police said.

"My understanding is that they came to Australia to work in the sex industry, but under more reasonable conditions," Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Tim Morris said.

'Vanloads of men'

Once the women were in Australia, the syndicate took their passports, officials said.

"This is probably the largest alleged syndicate that we have smashed," Immigration Department Assistant Secretary Lyn O'Connell said.

The five people arrested include a South Korean woman and a Korean-Australian woman, who police allege is the head of a syndicate that was making $2.8m (£1.4m) annually.

Government prosecutors said the evidence against the five includes six months of intercepted phone calls and Korean-language business documents, Reuters news agency reported.

Prostitution is legal in most of Australia but new slavery laws were introduced in 1999 to prevent vulnerable women being exploited.

A business owner near one of the brothels said it was staffed by Chinese, Japanese and Korean women and was always busy, says the BBC's Phil Mercer in Sydney.

At the weekends, vanloads of Asian men would descend on the premises, he says.

First pictures of 'abuse' cellar

The pictures are the first to
be released by police

First pictures of 'abuse' cellar The first pictures of the cellar at the centre of a child abuse investigation in Jersey have been released.

Police have been excavating the chamber at the Haut de la Garenne former children's home over the past week.

Around 160 people claim they were abused at the home and a child's remains were found under a floor in a stairwell last Saturday.

Forensic experts are continuing to sift evidence and suspect there may be four bricked-up chambers.

'Significant finds'

Dozens of people have come forward in the last week claiming they were abused while at the centre.

The allegations date back to the 1970s and 1980s and some are from more than 40 years ago.

There have been accusations that people were kept in solitary confinement, raped and beaten.

Detectives said their investigation of the first cellar had uncovered two "significant finds" - reportedly shackles and a bath.

Police have used a digger to take off layers of soil but investigations were scaled down on Sunday to give forensic teams a break.

Twelve detectives from forces across England and Wales have been called in to help with the investigation.

Deputy police chief Lenny Harper told reporters on Saturday that police had been able to substantiate "to some degree" reports that someone had been approached by a former care worker and intimidated.

"I can't emphasise too much that anyone approaching victims or witnesses in this case could well be found to be perverting the course of justice," he warned.


[ Establishment child abuse is still going on behind closed doors. Occasionally, there will be cases surfacing in public institutions and private companies but the real core psychopathology remains very much untouched. Indeed, they thrive on the disclosures and discoveries such as the one above, as it gives the illusion that the authorities are doing their job. Meanwhile, the Police chief or politician, diplomat or Duke can continue to prey on the young.

Systematic abuse is endemic in the Establishment circles and remains tightly sealed Club. How wonderful it would be see that nest of vipers brought out from the dark cover of Parliament or Congress and given the full light of truth. ]

Child's body found at care home

Parts of a child's body have been found by police in a former children's home in Jersey.

Police believe more bodies may be found at Haut de la Garenne in St Martin, which is at the centre of an inquiry into alleged child abuse.

The remains are thought to date from the early 1980s. Police have not said whether they are male or female.

The investigation involves the abuse of boys and girls aged between 11 and 15, since the 1960s.

We don't know yet that this is a murder, and we don't know yet if this is the only remains that we're going to find in there Jersey's Deputy Chief Police Officer, Lenny Harper

Jersey police began investigating allegations of abuse in November last year.

The excavation of Haut de la Garenne, involving a sniffer dog and ground radar, started on Tuesday when information emerged from the police inquiry.

The investigation involves several government institutions and organisations in Jersey, with the Haute de la Garenne home and Jersey Sea Cadets the main focus of the inquiry.

A police spokeswoman said more than 140 potential victims or witnesses had contacted a helpline since the investigations began.

Specialist assistance

Jersey's Deputy Chief Police Officer, Lenny Harper, who is in charge of the investigation, said detectives "think there is the possibility they may find more remains".

There's no suggestion that this is a current problem whatsoever, and I do believe that children today in Jersey are safe from this type of abuse Senator Frank Walker, Chief Minister of Jersey

Mr Harper told a news conference Jersey police were in close touch with more specialist assistance from the UK.

He said he was now dealing with a "potential major crime inquiry concerning a possible homicide".

"We don't know yet that this is a murder, and we don't know yet if this is the only remains that we're going to find in there," he said.

He said the search would continue in the coming days, and possibly weeks.

'Deeply distressing'

Senator Frank Walker, Chief Minister of Jersey, said he was horrified and saddened by the discovery.

"It's deeply distressing and a most serious issue for Jersey," he said.

I am frankly very apprehensive about what else they will find Former Jersey Health Minister Senator Stuart Syvret

However, he added: "I understand the remains [that] have been found go back quite some time.

"There's no suggestion that this is a current problem whatsoever, and I do believe that children today in Jersey are safe from this type of abuse."

Former Jersey Health Minister Senator Stuart Syvret urged anyone who had been at Haut de la Garenne to come forward.

His concerns last year about alleged child abuse in Jersey institutions led to an independent review of child care services by Jersey's parliament, the States of Jersey.

Mr Syvret told BBC News: "It's essential those with concerns call it, or get in touch with the police.

"Having spoken to people who were at Haut de la Garenne, this discovery is not surprising.

"I am frankly very apprehensive about what else they will find."

Haut de la Garenne started life in 1867 as the Industrial School, for "young people of the lower classes of society and neglected children".

It is now Jersey's Youth Hostel and featured as a police station in the TV series Bergerac.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/jersey/7260625.stm

Published: 2008/02/23 21:00:11 GMT

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