Women's Views on News |
- Reports clash on HIV and sex trafficking
- Tate Modern’s really big Schendel show
- Yarl’s Wood allegations continue
| Reports clash on HIV and sex trafficking Posted: 26 Sep 2013 08:35 AM PDT
Two UN reports are telling countries that in order to support efforts to reduce HIV/AIDS and to promote the human rights of people in prostitution, all aspects of the commercial sex industry should be decriminalized. The two reports are the Global Commission on HIV and the Law's report ‘HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights and Health’ (2012), published by UNDP, and the UNDP, UNFPA and UNAIDS-backed report, ‘Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific’ (2012). But they not only make recommendations in direct opposition to international human rights standards, but also largely ignore the experiences and views of survivors of prostitution and sex trafficking, says campaign group Equality Now. There is mounting evidence, Equality Now points out, that decriminalisation and legalisation – including of brothels – does not protect people in prostitution or improve their situation. Survivors have long said that to combat sex trafficking, we must address the demand for commercial sex that fuels it, including through laws that criminalize the purchase of sex. And the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) calls for countries to "suppress all forms of traffic in women and exploitation of prostitution of women," but the reports at issue call for the opposite: the decriminalisation of pimping, brothel-keeping and the purchase of sex. “When people tell me that women choose this life [prostitution], I can't help but laugh,” Ayesha, a survivor from India, told Equality Now. “Do they know how many women like me have tried to escape, but have been beaten black and blue when they are caught? “To the men who buy us, we are like meat. To everybody else in society, we simply do not exist.” And Alma, a survivor and activist from the Philippines, has said that "Society's understanding of human trafficking and prostitution needs to change. “In my country, people believe that prostitutes are criminals and buyers are the victims. This is wrong… “We need to change this thinking and educate young girls about the abuses of the sex industry, to let them know that they do have choices. Women are human beings, not commodities to be bought and sold." The effectiveness of combating sex trafficking through addressing the demand for commercial sex has been affirmed by the UN Trafficking Protocol, the UN Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women and the former head of UN Women. The Swedish (or Nordic) model on prostitution addresses demand by decriminalising the person in prostitution and criminalising the buyers and pimps. This approach recognises the inherent inequality in the power dynamic between the buyer and the person bought in a commercial sex transaction, and that demand for commercial sex is the main driving force behind sex trafficking. UNDP, UNFPA, UN Women and UN Volunteers issued a report in September 2013 which found that rape perpetration is strongly associated with the purchase of commercial sex, and noted that both stem from gender inequality. Recognition of the connection between various forms of violence against women and the importance of addressing its root causes has been a central component of the UN's work. However, the two UN reports at issue seem to ignore this, instead calling for laws that address the demand for commercial sex to be repealed. Promoting the human rights of people in prostitution – including their right to health, safety and freedom from violence and exploitation – and protecting them from HIV, is imperative. However, says Equality Now, the UN reports' recommendations are in direct opposition to efforts and policies that have been and are widely supported throughout the UN. They also jeopardize efforts to prevent and address sex trafficking and promote gender equality. These cannot be side effects of efforts to prevent HIV. Please join survivors such as Ayesha, Alma, and Michelle and Sam, Equality Now, and a coalition of 97 survivor-led and anti-trafficking organisations worldwide who have been disputing the UN reports since November 2012, in urging UNAIDS, UNFPA and UNDP to: Clarify their position on the decriminalization of pimps, brothel owners and buyers; In all future development of policies and programs on issues that affect people in the commercial sex industry, consult, involve and reflect the views of survivors of commercial sexual exploitation as well as a more diverse range of groups working on the issue of prostitution and sex trafficking. Click here to see who to write to. For as Rachel Morgan so eloquently wrote in her recent article in the Independent: ‘To be prostituted is humiliating enough; to legalise prostitution is to condone that humiliation, and to absolve those who inflict it’. Equality Now works to achieve legal and systemic change that addresses violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world.  |
| Tate Modern’s really big Schendel show Posted: 26 Sep 2013 04:04 AM PDT
The artist Mira Schendel is a towering figure of Brazilian modernism, cited as a significant influence by many younger artists – and yet even in São Paulo, the majority of her works are in private collections, rather than on public display; and, Laura Barnett wrote in the Guardian recently, she has never been given a major solo retrospective outside Brazil, The Tate Modern is about to change that. This month a wide-ranging exhibition of Schendel’s work will open. Schendel’s artistic output? Colourful abstract canvases, in an almost figurative style; sculptures made from intricately knotted rice paper; huge, transparent “graphic objects” mounted on sheets of glass; hundreds of monotype prints; and complex paintings exploring diverse religious and philosophical themes, from the writings of Heidegger to Catholicism and the I Ching. Tanya Barson, curator of international art at Tate Modern, with a special interest in Latin America, told the Guardian “What’s remarkable about Mira is that she was affirming a new line in Brazilian art: one preoccupied with ontology, and one that had a certain softness and delicacy. "Her contemporaries respected her: a guestbook from one of her exhibitions in the 1960s reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of Brazilian art. But her work is astonishingly complex. With Mira, it was never a simple story.” Born in Zurich in 1919, she was the only daughter of Karl Leo Dub, a fabric merchant, and Ada Saveria Buettner, a milliner. Born Jewish in Switzerland, raised a Catholic in Italy, she was forced to forced to leave university in Milan in 1939 when Mussolini introduced anti-semitic legislation, and fled Italy in 1941, travelling through the Alps on foot. She reached Brazil, in 1949. She was 30 years old, and a refugee. Brazil saw a great influx of European intellectual and cultural émigrés because of the Second World War. "Incredible people” went there and found possibilities in being an artist and being Brazilian, Barson explained in the Independent recently. And, she added, a significant number were women. She cites the architect Lina Bo Bardi (originally from Italy), artist Tomie Ohtake (from Japan), photographer Claudia Andujar (Swiss) – as well as the Brazil-born artists Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape – as examples. As well as being one of Latin America's most important she was one of the most prolific post-war artists. And with her contemporaries Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, Schendel reinvented the language of European Modernism in Brazil. Her friends included theoretical physicist Mário Schenberg, philosopher Vilém Flusser, psychoanalyst, poet and critic Theon Spanudis and Concrete poet Haroldo de Campos. She made her work in her kitchen, and stored it in her living room. Her daughter Ada recalls her working at the kitchen table, covered with an ordinary, plastic, floral patterned tablecloth. And she was incredibly prolific, producing up to 4,000 works, right up to her death. So the Tate Modern's big autumn exhibition really is just literally big: over 250 of Mira's works, in 14 rooms. Barson's approach was to select several different series, and then show 10 or 20 related works from within them. "We choose things that are emblematic of different aspects of her career," she explained. This is the first ever international full-scale survey of her work. It brings together over 250 paintings, drawings and sculptures from her entire career, including works which have never been exhibited before. The Mira Schendel exhibition is at the Tate Modern, London, from 25 September 2013 until 19 January 2014.  |
| Yarl’s Wood allegations continue Posted: 26 Sep 2013 01:09 AM PDT
Trigger warning for this story and the links contained within it. In the Observer last week, the story of ‘Tanja’ revealed the systemic abuse of women in Yarl’s Wood immigration centre. Since its publication, other women have come forward to corroborate her story. One of them, a Nigerian woman resident in the UK since 1999, revealed that “[s]ome of the women are succumbing to whatever they are being propositioned to do. “Some of the guards are touching the women; the girls are being promised that they are going to get their freedom.” Another woman, from Lesotho, who has been detained twice in Yarl’s Wood, which is run by private sector outsourcing giant Serco, has kept in contact with other detainees in the centre and provided further details. “They give these ladies the impression that if you sleep with them they can help by putting in a word for you to be released or help with your case. “Most of the time women sleep with the guards hoping that if they sleep with that person I am going to get a favour in return.” The issue of consent and the lack of it is an interesting one here, with the abuse of power at its very heart. Harriet Wistrich, the lawyer at Birnberg Pierce who is representing some of the alleged victims, suggested to the Observer that “questions needed to be asked about whether consent could ever be freely given by individuals who were in such a vulnerable situation.” She said the women in the centre “are some of the most vulnerable you can imagine. Many have escaped horrific abuse in their own countries; most are very isolated from friends and family. “The state has a duty to investigate such serious allegations, but it has repeatedly failed. Now the government wants to remove legal aid altogether for detainees and foreign nationals, giving a green light to abuse at Yarl’s Wood to continue.” In the Telegraph, Natasha Walter questioned whether there is a case for detaining women in immigration centres at all. “Although many British people are unaware of the fact, women who have sought asylum can be locked up for any amount of time in the UK. This can have a shocking effect on women who are already traumatised from the abuses they have fled,” she writes. This is not the first case we have seen where women already traumatised have been effectively retraumatised at the hands of private sector companies in the interests of saving public funds. WVoN has previously reported on a number of serious concerns raised by social enterprise Kazuri about G4S’s provision of housing to asylum seekers, including housing which has been deemed unfit for human habitation; allegations that G4S has 'ignored' housing problems, despite complaints from residents; and complaints of intimidation and sexual harassment. Despite worrying failures to deliver, G4S, and other corporations like it, continue to be awarded lucrative government contracts, not least in the violence against women sector. More broadly, cuts to the public sector are directly affecting the ability of women to withstand and challenge such failures. Writing in the Observer, Nick Cohen pointed out that without lawyers such as Harriet Wistrich, the paper “would not have published a word about Yarl’s Wood.” Yet, he continued, “she will not be able to carry on bringing cases like this to the public’s attention for much longer” because of the cuts to legal aid – introduced by the coalition government. These cuts will affect the ability of lawyers like Wistrich and her clients to challenge state failures at all. Tooks Chambers, the firm that represented the family of Stephen Lawrence and played a role in the Hillsborough Inquiry, recently announced it is to be dissolved, citing the Coalition government’s cuts to legal aid as the reason for its closure. In a statement, Tooks Chambers confirmed that “[t]he dissolution of Chambers is the direct result of government policies on Legal Aid. The public service we provide is dependent on public funding. 90 per cent of our work is publicly funded. “The government policies led by Justice Secretary Chris Grayling are cumulatively devastating the provision of legal services and threatening the rule of law.” The ever increasing involvement of the private sector in the delivery of public services to some of the most vulnerable groups in society should have all of us concerned about the direction in which the public sector is headed. Moreover, the reluctance of the government to address the impact of their policies and procurement practices fails to provide those affected with much hope for the future. Activists are working hard to raise awareness of the impact of the austerity measures and privatisation of public services. One such campaign is 10,000 Cuts and Counting, a “ceremony of remembrance and solidarity for those who have had their lives devastated by the austerity programme, including more than 10,000 people who died shortly after undergoing the Atos Work Capability Assessment”. The assessments – described by the campaign as ‘degrading’ – are contracted to outsourcing company Atos by the government; Atos assesses the needs of people receiving benefits related to disability and ill health. The campaign took its name following a Freedom of Information request to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), which revealed that between January 2011 and November 2011, 10,600 people died during or within six weeks of being put through the Atos Work Capability Assessment Such campaigns rely on members of the public to get involved and express their dissatisfaction with government rhetoric and practice. Will people rise to the challenge? Or is the impact of the Coalition’s public sector policy still flying beneath the radar to a public often more interested in X Factor than the implications of their X at the ballot box? Nick Cohen provides a sobering summary on the case of Yarl’s Wood: “There are few votes in defending legal aid and none in defending public money going to that most despised group: illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. “Even Observer readers may not want to hear about them and would much prefer to see a piece on Miley Cyrus. “If so, don’t worry. By this time next year, the sources for stories like ours on the women of Yarl’s Wood will have disappeared. “It will be as if they don’t exist.”  |
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