Aug 3, 2012

Sex Tourism? Don’t Kid Yourselves

One of the more disturbing aspects of globalization is the phenomenon of traveling for paid sex. It seems ridiculous when you consider the expense and the effort for something that happens everywhere on earth, so why is it a growing industry? Let’s begin with getting the concepts straight. We all like to have sex and who doesn’t love to travel, find exotic places and experience eroticism with... read more

Oct 28, 2010

Eliminating Obstetric Fistula

There are some causes of illness and misery that demand advanced diagnostics, expensive medication and even cutting edge technology. There are many other tragic conditions that need information, and care that exists, if only people have the means to reach it and know that it can help them.               This is the case of obstetric fistula, a deplorable trauma brought... read more

Apr 18, 2010

Letter to the Mom’s Who Mutilate Their Daughters

Recently the 12-year old, Budour, died after her family chose to have her clitoris surgically mutilated. This little Egyptian girl is only one of the estimated 6,000 girls who undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) every single day, but her death has triggered the slowly working cogs of progress towards eradicating this vicious cultural practice meant to control and condemn women’s sexuality. I... read more

May 2, 2009

25th November – White Ribbon Day

Violence exists in society, and violence as such needs to be combated. But violence against women is especially disturbing. It attempts to subdue women and have us internalize that femaleness destines us to inferiority. It also shatters the lives of children who witness it and grow up under its direct and indirect influence. While some advance has been seen in recent decades in the criminalization and... read more

Jan 28, 2009

Men in the Struggle Against Sexual Violence

One of the great achievements of the 1970′s women’s movement was the set up of rape crisis centres that expanded across the globe in the decades that followed. It was vital for women to take control of this area of sexual violence, to design a response to female disempowerment by means of female support and re-empowerment. But perhaps the future of the international war against sexual violence... read more

Jan 13, 2009

Problems with the Criminalization of Sex Work

Look beyond the myth that sex workers are empowered women using their insatiable sexuality to earn a great living. Despite the protestations of very few high-class “escorts” who claim their lifestyles to be glamorous and lucrative, the reality is one of horror. There are many people who believe that prostitution, or sex work, is a career choice like any other, and that women actually have the market edge... read more

Jun 27, 2007

Protecting African Women: The Maputo Protocol

The brutal tide is changing on Female Genital Mutilation and Cutting (FGM) in Africa because the pressure is beginning to come from within. A great wheel of progress in gaining speed in the form of the Maputo Protocol, an African initiative to protect the rights of women on their continent. In October 2005, the Maputo Protocol came into force, following the African Union meeting in Maputo, Mozambique in... read more