POVERTY: PAKISTAN: Abducted and forced into a Muslim marriage

KARACHI, 27 February 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Tariq Saeed/IRIN
Hindus marking a ritual occasion feel increasingly threatened in Pakistan

Sixteen-year-old Ameena Ahmed*, now living in the town of Rahim Yar Khan in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, does not always respond when her mother-in-law calls out to her.
“Even after a year of `marriage’ I am not used to my new name. I was called Radha before,” she told IRIN on a rare occasion when she was allowed to go to the corner shop on her own to buy vegetables.
Ameena, or Radha as she still calls herself, was abducted from Karachi about 13 months ago by a group of young men who offered her ice-cream and a ride in their car. Before she knew what was happening, she was dragged into a larger van, and driven to an area she did not know.
She was then pressured into signing forms which she later found meant she was married to Ahmed Salim, 25; she was converted to a Muslim after being asked to recite some verses in front of a cleric. She was obliged to wear a veil. Seven months ago, Ameena, who has not seen her parents or three siblings since then and “misses them a lot”, moved with her new family to southern Punjab.
"The abduction and kidnapping of Hindu girls is becoming more and more common," Amarnath Motumal, a lawyer and leader of Karachi’s Hindu community, told IRIN. “This trend has been growing over the past four or five years, and it is getting worse day by day.”
He said there were at least 15-20 forced abductions and conversions of young girls from Karachi each month, mainly from the multi-ethnic Lyari area. The fact that more and more people were moving to Karachi from the interior of Sindh Province added to the dangers, as there were now more Hindus in Karachi, he said.
“They come to search for better schooling, for work and to escape growing extremism,” said Motumal who believes Muslim religious schools are involved in the conversion business.
“Hindus are non-believers. They believe in many gods, not one, and are heretics. So they should be converted,” said Abdul Mannan, 20, a Muslim student. He said he would be willing to marry a Hindu girl, if asked to by his teachers, “because conversions brought big rewards from Allah [God]. But later I will marry a `real’ Muslim girl as my second wife,” he said.
According to local law, a Muslim man can take more than one wife, but rights activists argue that the law infringes the rights of women and needs to be altered.
Motumal says Hindu organizations are concerned only with the “forced conversion” of girls under 18. “Adult women are of course free to choose,” he said.

“Lured away”
Sunil Sushmt, 40, who lives in a village close to the city of Mirpurkhas in central Sindh Province, said his 14-year-old daughter was “lured away” by an older neighbour and, her parents believe, forcibly converted after marriage to a Muslim. “She was a child. What choice did she have?” her father asked. He said her mother still cries for her “almost daily” a year after the event.
Sushmat is also concerned about how his daughter is being treated. “We know many converts are treated like slaves, not wives,” he said.
According to official figures, Hindus based mainly in Sindh make up 2 percent of Pakistan’s total population of 165 million. “We believe this figure could be higher,” Motumal said.
According to media reports, a growing number of Hindus have been fleeing Pakistan, mainly for neighbouring India. The kidnapping of girls and other forms of persecution is a factor in this, according to those who have decided not to stay in the country any longer.
“My family has lived in Sindh for generations,” Parvati Devi, 70, told IRIN. “But now I worry for the future of my granddaughters and their children. Maybe we too should leave,” she said. “The entire family is seriously considering this.”
*not her real name
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94969

MALNUTRITION: http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/water-security-climate-change/opinions/we-need-a-new-metric-for-water-scarcity-in-a

Richard Taylor
15 September 2010
The current metric for assessing water scarcity in Africa should be abandoned in favour of one tailored to local realities, argues Richard Taylor.Ensuring that people have access to safe and affordable water supplies will be a major challenge for many developing countries as populations grow and agriculture and industry expand over the coming decades.One of the greatest threats to water security is simply scarcity, where demand outstrips supply. This can result from geography, overexploitation or inadequate infrastructure, and climate change will put further pressure on the availability of freshwater in many parts of the world.Nations or regions that are suffering from scarcity can achieve water security by the dual strategy of increasing water availability (such as with improved water storage, wastewater recycling or desalination) and cutting demand (such as with more efficient irrigation or food imports).Failure to do so can have devastating consequences. Water shortages can ruin crops, increase the incidence of water-borne and water-related diseases, and damage aquatic ecosystems (the shrinking of Lake Chad being a prime example). Water scarcity can also fuel civil strife.Policies that will help to avert these crises require robust ways of measuring water scarcity to target areas most at risk. But predicting water scarcity, particularly while the climate is changing, is difficult and at present the main method for assessing shortages — the so-called 'water stress index' — is not up to the task.Overestimating demand…Using this metric, researchers estimate that by 2025, the number of water-scarce nations in Sub-Saharan Africa will increase from 14 to 25, affecting almost half of the region's projected population of 1.4 billion people.But such assessments can misrepresent the scale and nature of the water crisis on the continent because the water stress index overestimates water demand and misrepresents freshwater supply. For example, the water stress index assumes domestic consumption is about 40 cubic metres per person a year. Agricultural and industrial water demand are assumed to be to 20 times more than that. These assumptions are based on lifestyles in the developed world and do not reflect the reality of water use in Africa. Actual domestic and industrial water use combined on the continent is closer to 25 cubic metres per person a year — about 10 per cent of the combined average in Europe and 6.5 per cent of the combined average in North America. Furthermore, irrigated agriculture accounts for more than two-thirds of all global freshwater withdrawals whereas more than 95 per cent of all food production in Sub-Saharan Africa is rain-fed. Despite calls for substantial increases in irrigated agriculture to achieve food security in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is unclear where this water will come from — especially while the environment and climate are changing. So, actual irrigation water demand in Sub-Saharan Africa is, and will likely remain, a small fraction of that used in countries such as Australia, China, India and the United States.… and underestimating supplyOn the supply side, freshwater availability in the water stress index is calculated from observations and simulations of average river flow — the mean annual river runoff (MARR). But river runoff in Africa can often change dramatically from one season to the next. Indeed, Sub-Saharan Africa is home to some of the most variable rivers in the world, where dry-season flows may be zero or only a tiny fraction of rainy season flows. Such variability is only expected to increase as a result of climate change. The use of MARR to estimate water availability in the water stress index ignores this variability, despite its critical importance in planning water security. Another significant problem with the use of MARR to estimate water availability in Sub-Saharan Africa is that it excludes soil moisture derived from rainfall. But in a region where almost all agriculture is rain-fed, soil moisture provides the single largest source of freshwater for food production.Towards a new metricWe need to abandon the water stress index as a way of defining water scarcity and insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa, as it fundamentally misrepresents current and future water crises in the region. Otherwise, there is a serious risk that precious, limited resources will be wasted by policies which address water 'scarcity' in regions where freshwater demand has been grossly overestimated, such as the Upper Nile basin, and which overlook actual water scarcity in regions where mean river flows mask seasonal water shortages, such as in the headwaters of the Limpopo.A new metric is urgently required that is tailored to the local realities of water demand in Sub-Saharan Africa and accounts for both soil moisture and a region's seasonal variability in freshwater resources. There is some progress in this direction. Through research in East Africa, a multidisciplinary team under the UK government's Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme is developing a metric that considers seasonally varying demand, soil moisture and freshwater storage to better inform water security planning in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is with such metrics that policymakers can design effective, targeted strategies to address actual water scarcity today and in the uncertain future.
Richard Taylor is a reader in hydrogeology at the department of geography, University College London, United Kingdom.
http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/water-security-climate-change/opinions/we-need-a-new-metric-for-water-scarcity-in-africa.html

POVERTY: Kenya: Nomadic communities

31 August 2010 (PLUSNEWS)
KENYA: Camel clinics bring condoms to nomads - In the remote and rural district of Samburu, northern Kenya, where paved roads are scarce and motorised transport hard to come by, reaching the mostly pastoralist and nomadic inhabitants with HIV/AIDS services requires an unusual approach. John Lokolale, 21, a Samburu Moran (warrior), said he did not know what the word condom meant until recently. "Now I know a condom because I have seen it," he told IRIN/PlusNews. "These days, when I get a girl I tell her I will use a condom because I have a stock in my house. They brought it here with a camel, and I kept many for myself." The Nomadic Communities Trust (NCT), a community-based health services organization, started using camels to reach the Samburu people with mobile clinics in 2006. "We realized we had to be innovative ... and we looked around; we are glad camels have come in handy in [delivering] not only condoms but also drugs and other reproductive health services," said Rose Kimanzi, an NCT field coordinator. The camel clinics offer family planning services, antenatal care, palliative care, HIV testing and condoms. NCT has trained 45 local people to provide information about HIV and condoms and they have so far reached more than 68,000 people. According to the 2007 Kenya AIDS Indicator Survey, Samburu district has an HIV prevalence of 6.1 percent, slightly lower than the national average of 7.4 percent. "When people come to places where we have set up camp they can receive all the services," said Kimanzi. "We have witnessed comparatively wide acceptance of condom use and family planning services." When I started working here, you couldn't mention the word condom...telling them to test for HIV was like an insult Michael Lol'ngojine, a community health worker trained by the NCT project to provide HIV counselling and testing services in Samburu, said people in the area had gradually changed their attitudes. "When I started working here [five years ago], you couldn't mention the word condom, or even tell people about family planning; telling them to test for HIV was like an insult," he told IRIN/PlusNews. "Today I am happy because they now seek services ... When they see the camels, they come along because they appreciate the need to test and they appreciate the need to use condoms," Lol'ngojine said. "Here people still believe in traditional medicines, and if you don't test them for HIV ... even those who are ailing from HIV-related diseases will just seek herbal treatment." Kimanzi noted that high levels of poverty, illiteracy and cultural practices like polygamy and early marriage have led to high levels of HIV infection among the Samburu and other nomadic illithan a dollar a day. "Poverty makes many parents marry off their daughters early, putting them at risk [of HIV]. Many of these young girls are married off to men who are already in polygamous unions, and when you mix that with illiteracy, then the situation becomes difficult." Besides these cultural practices, "Tribal conflicts amongst the Samburu and Pokot [a rival pastoralist group] have hindered the provision of health services, including HIV/AIDS services," Kimanzi said. The two communities carry out frequent cattle raids against each other. The government struggled to bring HIV/AIDS services to the people, said Dofa Abdi, Samburu District HIV/AIDS and STI (sexually transmitted infection) Coordinator. "We appreciate any efforts to offer HIV prevention services to nomadic communities here because they do not visit health facilities, nor is it easy to get to them since most government services are static."

POVERTY: An adolescent girl living in poverty is the most powerful person in the world.

July 15, 2010
We believe that an adolescent girl living in poverty is the most powerful person in the world. If we reach her early enough, she can accelerate economies, arrest major global health issues and break cycles of poverty.
When a girl gets a chance to stay in school, remain healthy, gain skills, she will marry later, have fewer and healthier children, and earn an income that she’ll invest back into her family. When she can grow into a woman and become an educated mother, an economic actor, an ambitious entrepreneur, or a prepared employee, she breaks the cycle of poverty. She and everyone around her benefits. That’s the girl effect – the powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate.
Child marriage is one of the barriers preventing the 600 million adolescent girls in developing countries from unleashing their full potential. The numbers speak clearly: one girl in seven in developing countries marries before age 15, and nearly half of all girls are expected to marry by age 20. Early marriage is most common in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where in 15 countries almost half of all girls are married before age 18.
Child marriage is not only a violation of human rights, but it also has serious consequences for national development, ultimately stunting educational and vocational opportunities for a large sector of the population and for the future generations.
Considerable evidence points to the negative impact of child marriage on girls, their children and their communities: child marriage often results in heightened vulnerability of girls to physical, sexual, psychological and economic abuse; increased rates of school dropout; early childbirth, which many times leads to poor health outcomes for both mother and child or even death, with pregnancy-related complications representing the leading cause of death among girls 15-19; increased risk of HIV transmission to married girls.
Consequently, interventions designed to specifically address child marriage actually impact a broader number of outcomes – health, education and economic empowerment. At the same time, programs focusing on providing safe spaces and putting assets in girls’ hands have shown to have a strong impact on delaying child marriage as well. In fact, when a girls has assets – and we are not talking massive resources, but simple things like a social network, specific skills, some knowledge, self-esteem, personal security… - if she has these resources to tap into, she then has a much greater chance of staying on course and not only delaying marriage but also positively impacting her overall future and the futures of her siblings. She becomes a hugely powerful agent of change.
Addressing child marriage also requires appropriate laws to be created and enforced, particularly at the subnational level, and changes in social norms and attitudes to be fostered through innovative programs.
But ultimately, eliminating child marriage is possible. We’ve seen it. Berhane Hewan, a program implemented by the Government of Ethiopia with support from UNFPA and the Population Council to prevent child marriage in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia has shown incredible changes in marriage age in relatively short periods of time.
Investing in adolescent girls and placing them at the center of international and national action is the right thing to do. It is also the smart thing to do. The truth is, adolescent girls will either accelerate growth or perpetuate poverty. It all depends on where we choose to invest existing resources.
http://www.undispatch.com/node/10043