Violence against girls in Southern African schools is steadily rising, but not enough is being done to prevent and censure abuse in educational institutions. The incidence seems high because more girls are reporting cases of abuse in schools, founder and director of the Girl Child Network (GCN), a Zimbabwean rights NGO. But there are other reasons as well, such as the increasing incidence of poverty: girls from poor homes are lured by teachers with promises of cash. Even the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS is another reason - the myth that sex with a virgin can cure the disease is still very prevalent, and desperate men will do anything. One of the sobering realities highlighted at the gathering, organised jointly by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and ActionAid International to focus on the problem, was that girls in African schools are repirted to be three times more likely to be abused than boys.
Values, Policies and Rights
In September 2008 world leaders convened in Accra, Ghana for Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to sign what is now popularly called the Triple A (the Accra Agenda for Action). It is actually a prepackaged condensation of evaluations of implementation of the Paris Declaration and consultations about them conducted between 2006 and 2008 in all the regions of the world. It charts the broad actions that will occupy many development actors between now and December 2011 when the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness takes place. This paper attempts to show how and why the text of the Triple A had to be different from the Paris Declaration and notes that gender is absent from the agenda. The custodians of the Paris declaration say the Triple A does not overtake, override nor overwrite the Paris Declaration. The former only reasserts the latter, which does not help gender issues.
The aim of ths paper was to examine the use of contraception in 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa; to assess changes in met need for contraception associated with wealth-related inequity; and to describe the relationship between the use of long-term versus short-term contraceptive methods and a woman’s fertility intentions and household wealth. The analysis was conducted with Demographic and Health Survey data from 13 sub-Saharan African countries. Researchers found that the use of contraception has increased substantially between surveys in Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia but has declined slightly in Kenya, Senegal and Uganda. Wealth-related inequalities in the met need for contraception have decreased in most countries and especially so in Mozambique, but they have increased in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia with regard to spacing births, and in Malawi, Senegal, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia with regard to limiting childbearing. After adjustment for fertility intention, women in the richest wealth quintile were more likely than those in the poorest quintile to practice long-term contraception. In conclusion, family planning programmes in sub-Saharan Africa show varying success in reaching all social segments, but inequities persist in all countries.
This report presents the results and analysis of a survey conducted to develop understanding of what NGOs and child rights coalitions would need in order to mainstream children's rights into the UN treaty body system. The survey found that NGO and child rights coalitions that report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child have not, for the most part, made purposeful ventures into the reporting processes of other treaty bodies. The research also illustrates that mainstreaming means different things in different contexts.
This briefing paper explores how UHC can deliver on nutrition, and addresses in particular maternal and child undernutrition. The authors point to the need to ensure that Universal Health Coverage (UHC) can deliver on the fight against undernutrition. They recommend that national, European and global development policies consider a shift from emergency-focused interventions to ones that prevent and treat undernutrition. Budgetary and extra-budgetary resources need to be mobilised within health programs to reach UHC for scaling up the implementation of nutrition interventions. They present evidence that the implementation of community approaches will be mostly effective if designed in an integrated manner combining the most effective child and maternal interventions. Governments, through pooled risk funding,should ensure access for the most vulnerable and marginalised groups as defined by the specific country context and scale up the implementation of effective nutrition specific interventions within the health policies to reach UHC, such as by integrating the prevention and treatment against chronic and sever acute malnutrition into the management of childhood illnesses of WHO guidelines; and integrating at the national level the prevention and treatment of chronic acute malnutrition or severe acute malnutrition into primary health
care packages.
This book focuses on how health policy is developed nationally and globally, clearly explaining the key concepts from political science with examples. This edition is fully updated to reflect new research and ways of thinking about the health policy process. The book covers a range of topics: health policy analysis; power and policy making; public and private sector; agenda setting; government roles in policy; interest groups and policy; policy implementation; globalisation and policy process; policy research and evaluation; and doing policy analysis. It is intended as a resource for students of public health and health policy, public health practitioners and policy makers.
To strengthen the rights-based national response to HIV, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), with the technical support of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (the Alliance), initiated a project in 2011 to help national stakeholders integrate human rights programmes into National Strategic Plans (NSPs). This brief report outlines some short-term outcomes and lessons learnt from this initiative. The three regional workshops, held in South Africa, Thailand and Saudi Arabia, have led to concrete outcomes, namely the integration of HIV-related human rights into NSPs in a number of countries. Participants have also initiated (or are planning) innovative human rights projects as a direct result of the workshops. The workshops have given governments, civil society representatives, affected communities and UNAIDS an opportunity to share good practice, exchange views and learn from each other. The challenge remains to continue to apply this learning to the protection and promotion of a rights-based approach in the national response to HIV, and to make the commitments of the 2011 Political Declaration a reality.
This is the report from a ground-breaking workshop on sexual rights held in Sweden. Some of the key issues discussed included who defines a right and how they are defined, going beyond identity politics sexuality and morality regarding women, men and transgendered people who sell sex for money.
UNRISD director Paul Ladd shares his reflections on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He argues that social development means keeping people at the centre, and recognising the contributions that can be made by all people, regardless of gender, age, race, ethnicity, physical ability, sexuality or any other characteristic. Enhancing well-being means that processes, relationships and institutions need to be transformed into ones that are based on equity and justice. This is critically shaped by how governments are run, how technology is used, how people adapt to demographic change, and how economies are structured, all of which depends on the political agenda. He argues that the 17 SDGs have many welcome innovations, including the aspiration to not tackle issues in silos, to leave no one behind and the recognition that all countries have problems. This presents a more political agenda than the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that preceded them, with solutions largely found in policy change and doing things differently, rather than solely spending more money on technocratic 'solutions' that, while well-meaning, ignored the power dynamics that determine who benefits from them and who is left by the wayside. Finally he observes that UNRISD’s three research programmes—social policy, gender and development, and the social dimensions of sustainable development—intend to make a critical contribution to debates on which policies and institutions, in which contexts, will make the most progress towards achieving the SDGs.
In this study, the impact of a government policy change, comprising the provision of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) and advice to restrict anti-malarial treatment to RDT-positive individuals, was assessed by describing diagnostic behaviour and treatment decision-making in febrile outpatients <10 years of age in three hospitals in the Kagera and Mwanza Region in northern Tanzania. The researchers found that, prior to policy change, there was no evident association between the actual level of transmission intensity and drug-prescribing behaviour. After policy change, there was a substantial decrease in anti-malarial prescription and an increase in prescription of antibiotics. The proportion of parasite-negative individuals who received anti-malarials decreased from 89.1% to 38.7% in Biharamulo and from 76.9% to 10% in Rubya after policy change. This study shows that an official policy change, where RDTs were provided and healthcare providers were advised to adhere to RDT results in prescribing drugs can be followed by more rational drug-prescribing behaviour. The current findings are promising for improving treatment policy in Tanzanian hospitals.