Ramona Vijeyarasa is a PhD candidate with the School of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia. She is undertaking a comparative study of the underlying causes of trafficking in women and girls for labor and sexual exploitation. She has worked with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in both Vietnam and Ukraine and the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and International Center for Transitional Justice, both in New York. Ramona's work at CRR included litigation and advocacy in the Philippines, India, Nepal, Slovakia, Poland and Moldova, around issues of access to contraception, abortion, post-abortion care and maternal mortality. Ramona earned her LL.M. degree in international law from New York University School of Law and received a Bachelor of Arts (Politics and History) and Bachelor of Laws from UNSW, following which she practiced commercial law. She has published on a range of issues including transitional justice, trafficking and gender inequality through the lens of the MDGs.
Hate crimes against homosexuals are connected to the political, social and legal environment in which they live. And in Africa religious groups are talking about morals but simultaneously stirring hatred directly leading to violence against homosexuals.
There is no shortage of reports or data documenting the abhorrent extent of sexual violence in the DRC. Women are targets working in the fields. Women are targets walking home. Women are targets virtually everywhere.
There are some decisions which can be only me made by us as individuals. These are inviolable personal choices. These are the decisions about our sexuality and how we will express it, about our bodies and what we will and will not do with them. But to make these personal choices, we need knowledge.
Malawi appears to be following Uganda’s and Rwanda’s lead on virulent homophobia with the arrest of two men charged with “carnal knowledge of a person against the order of nature.”
Little attention is paid to the stigma, discrimination and heightened risks faced by children orphaned by AIDS.
Despite international attention to the issue of maternal mortality worldwide, little progress has been made in reducing maternal deaths. In some countries, such as Zimbabwe, the situation is getting worse rather than better.
A proposed “anti-homosexuality” law blatantly disregards both international law and Uganda’s Constitution, threatening freedom of speech and freedom from violence and discrimination.
As far back as 2001, women living with HIV/AIDS were being sterilized in Namibian hospitals, without their autonomous consent. Shockingly, these women, whose cases the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS began documenting in 2008, continue to wait for redress.
If aid is meant to create cost-effective, efficient and sustainable health care systems, African nations and the global community must address the high number of unsafe abortions and the needless waste of money spent addressing complications.
Malawi has some of the harshest laws in all of Africa criminalizing homosexuality. Many religious groups actively support discrimination against gay, lesbian, and transgender persons and in turn are fanning the spread of HIV.
