Pakistan court OKs third sex for identity cards

Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered authorities on Wednesday to allow transvestites and eunuchs to identify themselves as a distinct gender as part of a move to ensure their rights, a lawyer said.

Known by the term "hijra" in conservative Muslim Pakistan, transvestites, eunuchs and hermaphrodites are generally shunned by society.

They often live together in slum communities and survive by begging and dancing at carnivals and weddings. Some are also involved in prostitution.

Iftikhar Chaudhry, chief justice of Pakistan, ordered the government to give national identity cards to members of the community showing their distinct gender and to take steps to ensure that they were not harassed.

"The government's registration authority has been directed to include a separate column in national identity cards showing them as hijras," Mohammad Aslam Khaki, a lawyer for hijras told Reuters.

"By doing so, they think they will get a distinct identity and it will help them get their rights."

A hijra association welcomed Chaudhry's order, saying it would ease their suffering.

"It's the first time in the 62-year history of Pakistan that such steps are being taken for our welfare," the association's president, who goes by the name Almas Bobby, told Reuters.

"It's a major step toward giving us respect and identity in society. We are slowly getting respect in society. Now people recognize that we are also human beings."

Khaki said the court also ordered the government to evolve a mechanism to ensure that hijras are not harassed and also take steps to ensure their inheritance rights.

Hijras are often denied places in schools or admittance to hospitals and landlords often refuse to rent or sell property to them. Their families often deny them their fair share of inherited property.

Hijras are both feared and pitied in Pakistan. They are feared for their supposed ability to put curses on people while they are pitied as they are widely viewed as the outcast children of Allah.

The number of hijras in Pakistan is not known but community leaders estimate there are about 300,000 of them.

In June, the Supreme Court ordered the government to set up a commission to conduct a census of hijras.



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UN Secretary-General Welcomes the New Year and New Executive Director with Visit to UNFPA

NEW YORK — UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon took time out of his busy schedule yesterday to visit UNFPA, personally wish staff a happy New Year, thank them for their work and welcome the new UNFPA Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin. Speaking to the staff who gathered in the corridors to hear him speak, the Secretary-General said he was pleased to have the highly qualified Dr. Osotimehin leading the organization, and he also praised the leadership of former Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid.

The UN Secretary-General noted that five of his eight strategic priorities for the coming year involve UNFPA, and he challenged staff to work together to meet the expectations of humanity, in spite of constraints. “We have to be very practical, creative and motivated in utilizing our limited resources to bring maximal results. For this, we have to work as one team, one family, one United Nations.”

In response, UNFPA Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin reiterated UNFPA's strong support to the Secretary-General and United Nations priorities, including the Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health, the Millennium Development Goals, humanitarian response, climate change and sustainable development. He pledged that as we face a world population of seven billion, UNFPA will follow the Secretary-General’s leadership to raise awareness about population and population dynamics. The aim, he said, is to ensure a sustainable world, and within that to protect human rights, especially those of women and children.

Source: www.unfpa.org

Fury over doctor's book on sex education for Muslims

By Aleem MaqboolBBC News, Islamabad
Dr Mobin Akhtar is on a mission to educate Pakistanis in sexual matters, but his latest attempt to do so has caused controversy.

The release of his book - Sex Education for Muslims - aims to teach people about sex in a way that is in keeping with Islamic instruction.

Dr Akhtar, 81, says the fact that sex is not discussed in Pakistan is having serious repercussions. As a psychiatrist, he says he has witnessed them himself, and that is why he felt the need to write his book.

"There's a huge problem in our country," he says.

"Adolescents, especially boys, when they get to puberty, and the changes that come with puberty, they think it's due to some disease.

"They start masturbating, and they are told that is very dangerous to health, and that this is sinful, very sinful."

'Misconceptions'

Dr Akhtar says he has seen cases where teenagers, not understanding what is happening to their bodies, have become depressed and even committed suicide.

"I myself passed through that stage with all these concerns, and there's no-one to tell you otherwise, and that these are wrong perceptions. It was only when I entered medical college that I found out that these were all misconceptions."

He says even now in Pakistan, many doctors do not discuss sexual matters openly, and that teachers and parents are embarrassed about the issues. There is no sex education teaching in government schools.

Dr Akhtar says it is not seen as appropriate to broach the subject of sex in the conservative culture of Pakistan, and that it is also felt that doing so might encourage young people to behave in an "un-Islamic" way.

"They ask me when you should start sex education, and I say as soon as the child can talk. They should be told the names of the genitals just as they are told about hands and eyes and ears, and nose," he says.

"When they get a little bigger and they ask where a child comes from, you can say it. That doesn't make the child sexually active or immoral."

Dr Akhtar says there is also nothing un-Islamic about discussing sex.

He says he felt that the best way to help people understand that was to write a book which brought together basic sex education with information about the Islamic perspective on the subject.

"When I started to study what the Koran, Islamic law and religious scholars had to say about it, I realised there is so much discussion about sex in Islam. One would be surprised.

"There are sayings from the Prophet Muhammad about sexual matters, and historical sources tell us he answered detailed queries on the subject from both men and women."

The writings in Dr Akhtar's book are interspersed with quotes from the Prophet Muhammad, and also from the Koran, like this one: "You are allowed intercourse at night with your wives during the month of fasting. They are as intimate for you as your own clothes, and vice versa." (Koran, Surah Baqra, Verse 187)

'Quack'

Among many other topics, Dr Akhtar writes of the Islamic thinking about masturbation, marital problems and how a man should wash himself after having sex so that he is clean enough to perform prayers.

But many Pakistanis have found Dr Akhtar's book unpalatable.

He tried to tone down the title - Sex Education for Muslims is the name of the English version of the book, in Urdu the title is Special Problems for Young People.

But that has not been enough to appease some.

"I have had threats. Even other doctors have accused me of acting like a maverick, a quack," he says.

"A provincial politician even hauled me into his office and said I was encouraging pornography. I explained I was doing nothing of the sort."

Dr Akhtar says he has found very few bookshops willing to stock his book, or any newspapers that will print paid advertisements for it.

"It is a very sad reaction. Ignorance about sexual matters is causing a lot of our young people unnecessary psychological distress, and we have to change that.

"I am only talking about educating people gradually and sensitively, but at the moment we are not even doing that."

Virtual Leadership Development Program (VLDP)

Virtual Leadership Development Program (VLDP) for local public and private sector

family planning/reproductive health teams working in M&E in Anglophone countries 

Applications due January 14, 2011 

USAID’s MEASURE Evaluation Population and Reproductive Health (PRH) Associate Award is pleased to announce a Virtual Leadership Development Program (VLDP) for local public and private sector family planning/reproductive health teams working in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in Anglophone countries.  PRH priority countries are especially encouraged to apply but all qualified applications will be considered.  The main goal of this VLDP is to empower those involved in the collection, analysis, and use of health data, at all levels of an organization, to lead teams to face their M&E challenges and achieve their desired results.

The VLDP M&E is designed to strengthen leadership and management practices for both public and private sector organizations. Experience delivering the VLDP in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia has shown that participation in this leadership program strengthens individual leadership skills, improves team work climate and results in stronger teams that deliver improved performance.

The VLDP is comprised of thirteen-week Internet-based facilitated modules on leadership development that are hosted on the VLDP website of MEASURE Evaluation partner, Management Sciences for Health (MSH).  A highly interactive learning program, the VLDP consists of seven learning modules, a supplementary participant workbook, expert virtual facilitation from experienced leadership and organizational development specialists along with M&E experts who will provide continual support, feedback and guidance to participating teams during the program. During the program, participants work in teams to identify key leadership challenges within their units and organizations that can be addressed through strengthened Leadership and management practices, and they develop and implement action plans to being successfully address these challenges. 

The application deadline is January 14, 2011. The program will begin on February 14, 2011 and conclude on May 13, 2011.

This VLDP is being offered free of charge to qualified teams.  The cost of the program is being supported by USAID.

Please find the application at the following website: 

This announcement is not only intended to inform you of the availability of the program, but also to ask for referrals of applicants.  There may be promising teams working in M&E of family planning and reproductive health programs that would be able to increase their contributions to this field in your country by enhancing their leadership skills through this program.   We would therefore appreciate your forwarding this announcement to potential applicants.

 For more information, contact the VLDP mailbox (VLDPMandE6@msh.org). You can also fax (617) 250-9090.

http://programs.msh.org/clm/applications/application_VLDP_ME6.doc

Need for the UN is greater than ever

More is being asked of the United Nations by more people in more places.

The United Nations today leads what seems at times like a double life. Pundits criticise it for not solving all the world's ills, yet people around the world are asking it to do more, in more places, than ever before - a trend that will continue in 2011.

It is not hard to see why. Newspapers, television and the internet make clear the sheer scale of the need. Conflicts rage in too many places. Natural disasters strike with greater fury and in greater numbers than ever.

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On top of all this, we face a new generation of threats, unlike any in history, which spill across borders and have global reach. No single country or group, however powerful, can deal with them alone. All must work together - in common cause for common solutions - to tackle challenges such as climate change, poverty and nuclear disarmament.

But there is profound scepticism that we can do so. The world looks to the UN as never before, yet the conventional wisdom is that we are not up to the job. The problems are too complicated. Resources are too few. The UN appears too divided to make the vital difference.

The conventional wisdom is, however, wrong; worse, it is dangerous, for we have all seen how quickly it can take hold, distort reality, and then harden like cement. For example, four years ago, when I came to office, only a handful of global leaders knew enough even to talk about climate change - the defining challenge of our times, whose effects we see every day, all around us. Today, we have moved climate change to the top of the global agenda.

But make no mistake: it has been a difficult road. In December 2009 in Copenhagen, world leaders talked far into the night and emerged, according to the conventional wisdom, with virtually nothing. In fact, though we did not get a comprehensive, legally binding treaty that would usher in an era of sustainable, low-carbon prosperity, as we had hoped, there were significant achievements in Copenhagen.

For the first time, developed and developing countries acknowledged their responsibility to curb emissions of greenhouse gasses and agreed on the goal of limiting global temperature rise to below 2 degrees. And, for the first time, countries made large pledges to finance mitigation and adaptation efforts: $30 billion over the next three years for fast-start financing, and $100 billion a year by 2020.

The lesson is that we should not dream of overnight breakthroughs, or allow ourselves to fall into despair in the absence of immediate progress. We must work to build on many smaller advances, wherever we can make them - by mobilising support, creating broad alliances, building coalitions, and taking into account a web of moving parts and complex issues - because that will set the stage for the eventual breakthroughs.

Collective action has never been easy, but it has never been more necessary than in achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goals - the world's blueprint for ending extreme poverty. The conventional wisdom will tell you that the MDG targets - reducing poverty and hunger, improving the health of mothers and children, combating HIV/AIDS, increasing access to education, protecting the environment, and forging a global partnership for development - are simply unattainable. In fact, we are controlling disease - polio, malaria and AIDS - better than ever, and making big, new investments in women's and children's health - the key to progress in many other areas.

Nevertheless, on climate change, poverty and other issues, the conventional wisdom is that the UN should cede responsibility to the G20. But the G20, by itself, is not the answer. Despite strenuous debate about currency issues and trade imbalances at its summit in Seoul in November, the sole area of agreement concerned an issue on the G20's agenda for the first time - economic development. Recognising that global recovery depends on the emerging economies (that is, the developing world), G20 leaders embraced investments aimed at lifting the world's most vulnerable people out of poverty.

That is why G20 leaders accept the need to work closely with the UN. After all, no organisation does development better. The G20 and the UN are finding new ways to work constructively together - not as rivals, but as increasingly close partners. And that is the way it should be.

Forty years ago, a great American statesman, Dean Acheson, looked back at the excitement he felt in helping to build the post-World War II order. Present at the Creation, he called his memoir.

Today, we find ourselves at an equally exciting moment, no less critical to the future of humankind. We, too, are present at a new creation. And the UN must constantly recreate itself as well. We must evolve and keep pace with a rapidly changing world. We must be faster and more flexible, efficient, transparent and accountable. In an age of austerity, resources are precious; we must make every dollar count.

People everywhere live in growing anxiety and fear. There is near-universal loss of trust in institutions and leaders. Amid such uncertainty, our future depends on a UN that brings together the countries of the world not only to talk and debate, but also to agree and to act; that mobilises civil society, business, philanthropists and ordinary citizens to help the world's governments solve current problems; and that delivers peace, development, human rights, and global public goods - in a word, hope - to people around the world every day.

Ban Ki-moon is Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.

UN Women Begins Its Work

Posted on January 1 2011 | News

The United Nations made history today as UN Women, the UN agency dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, has officially begun its work. This ambitious new organization consolidates and scales up UN actions to achieve gender equality, offering the promise of accelerated progress in realizing the rights of women worldwide.
Formally known as the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, UN Women emerged from agreement by UN Member States — backed by strong advocacy from the global women’s movement — that more must be done so women can claim equal rights and opportunities.
“UN Women will significantly boost UN efforts to promote gender equality, expand opportunity and tackle discrimination around the globe,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.
“This is a time of great promise,” said UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet, formerly President of Chile. “We have a historic opportunity to accelerate the achievement of what champions of gender equality have worked towards for years.”
UN Women was created by a UN General Assembly resolution in July 2010, becoming fully operational on 1 January 2011. It merges and builds on four parts of the UN system:

• Division for the Advancement of Women
• International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women
• Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women
• United Nations Development Fund for Women

As a global champion for women, UN Women will work with UN Member States to agree on international standards for gender equality, and help countries implement those standards. It will assist other UN agencies engaged with a broad spectrum of development issues to integrate gender equality priorities in their activities. Carrying out its programmes, UN Women will also work closely with civil society partners.
Gender equality is a basic human right and has enormous socio-economic ramifications. Empowering women fuels thriving economies, for example, spurring productivity and growth.
Many countries have made significant progress in advancing women’s standing, but gender discrimination remains deeply entrenched in every society. Women continue to suffer extreme forms of violence, and are locked out of many economic opportunities. Only low numbers participate in politics.
The United Nations has consistently supported progress in addressing these shortfalls but has faced hindrances including inadequate funding. A minimum of US$500 million has been set as the annual operating budget for UN Women.