Culture is one of the most sensitive aspects of people’s lives, particularly as it relates to sexual and reproductive behavior, attitudes, and norms. Therefore, when we talk about female circumcision (I still cannot call it mutilation), we should always look at this cultural practice as one of many good and bad things that happen to women universally, and not only to African women but women worldwide.
In my own experience testing an Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) screening intervention in Kenya, I have found that every one of the great reasons not to screen is critically important to consider. But in the course of my work on this issue, I have also found 111 reasons why screening for IPV cannot be brushed aside, either.
Ipas’s senior clinical advisor Mary Fjerstad interviews Kenya’s much-respected Dr. John Nyamu to discuss the long and difficult path he and so many other Kenyans have traveled to get where they are today on abortion.
UNAIDS released a report in advance of World AIDS Day with hopeful news about the epidemic: there has been nearly a 50 percent reduction in new infections across 25 low and middle income countries. As UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe put it, “We are moving from despair to hope.” Young people are at the center of that success.
When it comes to contraception, the United States could be viewed as the land of lunacy. The facts and figures from that country demonstrate the power of contraception to change a society.
Forced pregnancy testing in schools is a gross violation of young women’s fundamental human rights. It is a shock to see a practice I’ve come to associate with schools in the developing world being replicated in the United States.
Political Research Associates’ latest report documents efforts by the U.S Christian Right to push an ideology hostile to reproductive and LGBT rights on sub-Saharan African countries.
For too many, accessing health care is a challenge. Integrating reproductive health and HIV/AIDS services–providing both services under one roof–makes it easier for women to get what they need.
As the ancient Chinese proverb goes, “women hold up half the sky.” Yet how can they, if they do not even have a plot of land on which to stand?
African countries are too often lumped together as one big composite of grave statistics and chronic epidemics. Because of this, it’s especially important that the global development and reproductive health communities recognize and amplify those success stories that can be told. Ethiopia is one of them.
