Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food’s, Prof. Olivier De Schutter’s, second presentation to the UN General Assembly.  The interactive dialogue that followed Prof. De Schutter’s presentation is an excellent example of how the Special Procedures system of the UN Human Rights Council allows for greater flexibility and responsiveness to thematic issues like the right to food and to country specific situations. 

The role of a Special Rapporteur and of independent UN mandate holders in general represents progress in the human rights field and within the UN system because it takes a pressing human rights concern that has bubbled up to the UN via civil society and member state activity, empowers an individual or small team to further investigate and recommend solutions to these concerns, and can harness all members of society, from States to grassroots organizations to United Nations bodies to the media, in researching and formulating responses to these problems.  Appointing an independent expert who is both within and beholden to the UN system and yet functions independently and flexibly enhances the efficiency and capability of the UN.  And, it allows for reporting from these experts in a manner that is often impossible for member states of UN bodies to undertake on their own.

Prof. De Schutter’s latest report is a case in point regarding the ability of a special expert to say things that others cannot.  The report takes on current intellectual property rights as they relate to seeds, agricultural technologies, and the right to food.  In the first place it is both innovative and necessary that a right to food approach to food security takes into account the commercial side of food production and related agricultural concerns such as climate change, as opposed to limiting the right to food focus on (the also important and necessary) legal entitlements to this right located in court cases, framework laws, and constitutional provisions. 

Without addressing the commercial regime in which the production of food takes place the right to procure and obtain food rings hollow, as it captures only the demand side of the equation.  Analyzing the commercial concentration of agricultural inputs through a human rights lens and with a focus on the smallest, poorest farmers, who are not only food producers but must use their livelihoods from this production to secure their own food, refocuses the food security debate on those most affected.  While dominating the seed market may be seen as a success for companies such as Monsanto, agro-business monopolies have a significant impact on the lives, livelihoods, and production capabilities of small, poor farmers that is often detrimental.  These monopolies also impact agro-biodiversity, which has become even more crucial to maintain in the face of climate change.  And yet it can be hard for member states who benefit financially from such companies or whose governments are highly oriented to accept foreign investment in any form to take a critical eye or a public voice to such commercial concentration issues.

What is fascinating about the interactive dialogue process between a Special Rapporteur and the General Assembly is that it provides a platform for member states and affiliated organizations to respond to such claims and for the special experts to further explain themselves.  Yesterday, countries were not reticent to comment on their own view of the world’s intellectual property regime and to ask pressing questions.  In turn, Prof. De Schutter was able to respond briefly and advance and further elaborate upon the claims made in his report.  It is always heartening to see a report being put to use to further discussions and plans for action rather than just sitting on a shelf gathering dust. 

And, it is encouraging to see UN member states fully engaging UN special experts on topics that often call for substantial changes to be made at the national level and thus for engagement and resource shifting from these governments.  While no one pretends that the global food security problem will be solved over night, it is nonetheless inspiring to see people in positions of influence asking all of the right questions.

The current Yaz birth control controversy illustrates the continued tension between what pharmaceutical companies and the doctors that they pay claim is safe for consumption, and contrary scientific evidence. Natasha Singer of the New York Times is reporting that Yaz, a birth control pill manufactured and marketed by Bayer, is under fire as an inappropriately advertised, improperly made, more dangerous pill.  Two new studies out of Denmark and Holland and published in the British Medical Journal indicate that Yaz creates a higher risk of blood clots and strokes than other birth control pills.  A large group (at this time 74) of women in the U.S. are suing for blood clots and resultant health injuries that they have endured as a result of using Yaz.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been investigating Bayer and Yaz for some time, and Switzerland’s medicines supervisor is investigating this pill because it contributed to a lung clot that killed a woman earlier this month, and left a 16 year old girl permanently disabled last May.  The evidence has mounted around the globe that Yaz is an unsafe option, that the advertisements used by Bayer to promote Yaz obscured the health risks, and even that the manufacturing plants producing Yaz are not properly producing the drug.

Profit Motive Pushes Companies to Encourage Women to Take Unnecessary Risks

As is often the case in a pharmaceutical controversy, the doctors paid by Bayer are rushing to downplay the risk presented, while independent doctors take the approach you might expect from a health care practitioner: advising that, even if increased risk of blood clots and stroke is low, why not switch to any one of the multiple birth control pills that present a lower risk?  If you find the latter approach more sensible, congratulations; you are thinking like a person who would rather manage health risks than engage in unnecessary ones.  It seems too much of a coincidence that the only people who keep pushing the risk of Yaz are the only ones profiting monetarily from it.

Why Are Less Safe Birth Control Options Still on the Market?

Birth control pills present a unique pharmaceutical situation, for several reasons, one of which is that there are safer pills available and yet the less-safe pills remain on the market.  There are many different formulations of the hormones that go into the myriad birth control pills for sale, and not every combination of hormone is equally safe.  Dutch research shows that, while taking the pill generally increases a woman’s risk of blood clot, the extent of the risk depends on the exact type of hormones in the pill.  This research demonstrates that many women taking the pill are not taking the safest pill available to them.  Drug developers have been recalibrating the combination of hormones in birth control pills since the 1960s with the intent to reduce the risk of blood clots and thus make it safer for the women and girls that take it, which begs the question-why are we still marketed pills that are not at the optimum safety level?  How can companies such as Bayer continue to justify their manufacture of these less safe option?  It also raises the question of whether governments will allow them to advertise as “just as safe” as other oral contraceptive pills now that research shows that they are not “just as safe” as the other oral contraceptive options.

Birth Control: A Gendered Burden

Because only women and girls take birth control pills and other forms of hormonal contraception, this particular pharmaceutical controversy takes on a gendered dimension.  Yaz’s ads attempt a Sex and the City vibe that the New York Times describes as having succeeded in making it and its sister drug “the go-to brands for women under 35.”  The FDA has criticized Yaz’s advertisements-which feature young, attractive women chatting about Yaz at a chic rooftop party; ensconced on a plush sofa, they discuss the pill as servers stroll by with cocktails-for misleading women about the non-pregnancy related uses of this pill.  If ever a TV spot tried to make a pill seem trendy and fashionable, this is it.  It is this marketing of the pill as if it were a handbag or car that raises additional ethical questions.  Of course the pill is not some sort of fashion accessory, and of course the young women that it targets, such as the now permanently disabled 16 year old in Switzerland, should have it presented to them as a contraceptive and not a “lifestyle” drug.  In response to FDA demands, Bayer released a “follow-up” Yaz advertisement to clarify the previous one; and yet here is the same young, beautiful doctor, strolling through a party in a great outfit to tell you about these “clarifications.”  Not much has changed, nor do the ads reveal that this particular type of hormone combination presents a higher risk than others.

Hortense writes on Jezebel.com that flippant and non-medical advertising is a feature of all pharmaceuticals, not just birth control:

This is a problem that extends to all ads for medication; the consumer is told to go to the doctor and demand a certain brand name, without even knowing,  exactly, what the medication really does to the body. Someone always does a voice over about diarrhea and blood clots and death, but all the audience     seems to pick up on are the scenes of horses frolicking or women laughing or couples holding hands in the sun.

And yet contraception is a uniquely female issue; men are less likely to engage in or worry about shopping for or using birth control.  They have fewer options, and a daily pill is not currently available to them, in part because pharmaceutical companies have chosen not to produce one.  Because women and men share unequally in the child bearing process-obviously the burden (or, if you like, the privilege and the joy) of actually bearing the child falls on women, and so, they more readily accept the risks, including stroke and death, associated with pregnancy prevention in order to simply prevent the pregnancy.  Men can don a condom or have a vasectomy, but if a girl or a woman wants to take matters into her own hands, she can take a pill, use a patch, get a shot, etc.  As Lisa Campo-Engelstein writes in Science Progress, this creates an unequal burden that has women and girls using more of their time and money, and encountering more stress and stigma, for finding, using, and dealing with the repercussions-negative health effects; failed contraception-of birth control.

The Yaz controversy highlights the serious health risks associated with female birth control methods.  While these are often presented as minimal, Campo-Engelstein points out that the gravity of these side effects is not only important to consider in its own right,  but becomes more problematic when compared to the side effects of current male options. The comparison reveals the unequal burden: 

The side effects of female hormonal contraceptives can include cardiovascular complications, depression, hepatic adenomas, pathologic weight gain, and possible bone loss. The two available male forms of contraception also carry fewer risks than their corresponding female contraceptives, female barrier methods and tubal ligation, respectively. Some dismiss women’s side effects as “minor”; however, to the women who experience them, they often are far from benign. Women most commonly discontinue contraceptives due to side effects and most forms of contraception have discontinuation rates approaching 50 percent after one year of use.

The fact that women discontinue their use of birth control pills at “rates approaching 50 percent after one year of use” is immensely telling about the health risks these pills present. 

Big Pharmas Shut Down Male Contraception Options

Seeing birth control as a uniquely female issue means that most research dollars are targeted to creating new forms of female birth control vs. new forms of male birth control.  Time Magazine reported in August 2008 that the reason we don’t have male birth control options that mirror female options is that pharmaceutical companies-including Bayer, which led the market in halting the research, inspiring others to abandon it as well-decided in 2006 that there was not a large enough market for male contraception.  This despite the fact that they were reportedly on the verge of successful breakthroughs and that global surveys indicate male interest in birth control pills or injections.  Doctors researching male contraception cite the “knee-jerk” reaction of pharmaceutical companies that men aren’t interested, despite evidence to the contrary.  The Time article notes that “if even a small percentage of sexually active men agreed to try a new method of birth control, that would amount to a colossal number of potential consumers,” meaning, there should be profit incentive for developing the product.  The fact that there is insufficient corporate interest indicates that other barriers, such as gendered and cultural assumptions about male sexuality, are getting in the way of research and development.

To close the gap, the World Health Organization has led the charge in pushing for new male contraception options as part of their family planning programme.  It says something about the stakes involved and the integral role male birth control could play that the WHO has gotten behind it, especially in the face of disinterest by for-profit health related companies.  Until other options are available, however, and even when they are, governments must hold Bayer and other companies accountable for the preventable health risks presented by their products and for the way that these products are marketed.

Throughout all of Europe, undocumented workers, migrants, refugees and others attempt to carve out a life.  Many make the treacherous journey to seek a job to send money back home. But if you get sick…hope for the best.

So can it be true?  Sweden?  That wonderful Scandinavian country where everyone is healthy, wealthy, and attractive? Where last year they accepted half of all Europe’s asylum seekers?  Where the contribution to global development aid far surpasses most of Europe’s and the Untied States?  (Sweden contributes 1% of its GDP to aid while the US contributes 0.16%).

According to a study launched yesterday by Medicines du Monde, Sweden refuses to provide free basic health care services to undocumented migrants.  This (”free”) probably does not come as a shock for most Americans.

But in Europe, access to health care is considered a human right - not conditioned on crazy private health insurance schemes.  Sweden’s health care system is based on the principles of equality and free choice in health care and covers the whole population.  This system allows nationals and the majority of authorised residents access to ALL medical services except for - non medically recommended plastic surgery.

A person’s contribution toward ALL medical expenses cannot exceed 96.5 euros over a 12-month period.  Children below 18 are exempt from this charge as are women in need of ante and post natal care, screening and treatment of infectious diseases (including HIV), cellular screening, home hospital care help, and family planning.

What a great system!

However, some Swedish county councils do offer very limited free health care access to undocumented workers.  In Stockholm, for example, allows access to pre-natal care to undocumented pregnant women.  But what happens when she gives birth?  An infant is extremely vulnerable and requires medical check-ups.  Catching something early on means the child has a better chance of a healthy life.   But denying children,  born in Sweden to undocumented migrants, free access  is a violation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. Every child is entitled to special care and assistance under this convention, regardless of socioeconomic conditions.

Instead, undocumented migrants and rejected asylum seekers have to pay the full fee.     Most cannot.  So children are left to suffer at the expense of non-existing legislation.  .

Today, after a much-anticipated wait, U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus laid out a health care reform plan. One of the key features of this plan is that it would prohibit private insurance companies from denying insurance to people because of preexisting conditions that they may have, and from discriminating against them because of their health status. The way in which the U.S. government has allowed private health insurance companies to get away with such discrimination and denial in the past is appalling, and must be stopped if the U.S. is to realize the right to health by ensuring that healthcare is available to everyone.

President Obama highlighted the practice of discrimination in coverage and denial or removal of insurance outright in his health care speech to Congress on September 9, 2009. He illustrated the point with examples of actual Americans that had died or suffered grave consequences because of this practice, such as the story of a man from Illinois whose insurance company took away his coverage in the middle of his chemotherapy treatment because he hadn’t reported gallstones that were unknown to him; this man died of cancer as a result. President Obama went on with the illustrations, describing a woman from Texas on the verge of receiving a double mastectomy for breast cancer, whose insurance company canceled her policy because she had not declared a case of acne, a move that resulted in a doubling in size of her breast cancer before she was able to get her insurance reinstated. Obama rightly described this situation as “heartbreaking” and “wrong.” It is clear that in these two examples, the insurance companies were looking for any excuse not to pay for expensive, but necessary, cancer treatments. Unfortunately, until now U.S. law has allowed such practices to stay in place. These examples demonstrate that letting profit motive rule American healthcare has amounted to the sanctioned killing of sick people.

Even more ridiculous is that in eight states and the District of Columbia, being beaten by your partner is considered a pre-existing condition for which insurance companies can deny you coverage. Ryan Grim writes for the Huffiington Post that the logic of the insurance company is that, if you are currently in a relationship with someone who physically abuses you, you are more likely to be physically abused in the future than other possible insurance holders, and so insuring you is too much of risk. Hence, being a victim of relationship violence counts as a “pre-existing condition” in insurance terms. So far, this classification is legal. Grim reports that Democrats tried to end the practice in 2006, but that 10 Republicans on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted against Senator Pat Murray’s proposed amendment, resulting in a 10-10 tie and a failure for the amendment. Grim points out that one of those no votes was issued by Senator Mike Enzi, who is currently one of the six Finance Committee members tasked with developing a bipartisan bill. Senator Enzi defended his vote against the amendment at the time, saying that prohibiting the denial of coverage on the basis that being a victim of relationship violence is a pre-existing condition would increase the price of insurance, taking it out of the reach of even more people.

This logic is incredibly faulty. If there is a government cap on how much insurance companies can charge individuals, mandating that all individuals receive coverage cannot increase the price above that cap, and so insurance holders will not face prohibitive prices. Not to mention that this logic leaves everything—the final decision about who receives health care—in the hands of the insurance companies. This means that all the insurance companies have to do is decide that something, anything at all, makes you more predisposed than the average person to be ill in some way, and then they can deny you coverage, claiming that if they gave it to you it would drive up the price for everyone else, and then even more people would lose their insurance. If anyone truly thinks that private insurance companies in the U.S. are at risk for profit loss to the point that they can not operate as a successful business, then we not only have an agreement not to regulate their criteria for providing insurance, we have also ignored their finances. They are not in any risk of sinking if they take on people experiencing relationship violence or continue to provide chemotherapy to patients that have been paying their insurance premiums for year. But more importantly, the focus on the bottom line of the insurance companies is exactly the wrong focus. It is not the American government’s job to protect the pocket books of private insurers only, and at the expense of ordinary citizens. Their job is to make sure that everyone in the country has health care, and is not left to illness and death because preventing or treating their illness would dip into the profits of the insurance giants. While it is true that the medical sector accounts for 1/6 of the U.S. economy, and so the government would be right to facilitate its continued success and thus the success of the economy as a whole, this does not have to be done, but more importantly should not be done, to the detriment of American health.

The U.S. often holds itself apart from the rest of the world, and it has certainly stood apart in not providing health care when all other countries of comparable wealth and development have done so. Lest Americans think that health care as a human right is a “foreign” idea, President Obama’s speech reminded them that the campaign to make it universally available began with President Roosevelt in the 1940s. In Roosevelt’s January 11, 1944 State of the Union address to Congress, he stated that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence,” and declared “the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health” as a fundamental right within the U.S.. While the U.S. has a highly developed understanding of freedom and the right to life, people often overlook that life without healthcare is a shorter, more painful life; in the examples given in Obama’s speech, we can see that life without healthcare can quickly result in death that may have been prevented by the timely and adequate provision of medical care.

Americans should carefully scrutinize the proposed health care reform plan that is being released today. It must truly make healthcare an option for everyone, and to do so, it must reign in the unchecked profit motive of health insurance companies that have allowed them to deny people coverage or drop coverage in the middle of medical treatment. Only a plan that places human health above the interests of corporate insurers will deliver the change that is urgently needed.

The human rights group Physicians for Human Rights released a new report yesterday detailing the role that health professionals played in interrogating and torturing inmates at Guantanamo Bay.  The role of health professionals first came to light in a 2004 CIA report, but Physicians for Human Rights now claim that they played a much more central role than previously believed.  The report, entitled “Aiding Torture: Health Professionals’ Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 CIA Inspector General’s Report”, alleges that American doctors and psychologists violated medical ethics and contributed to human rights abuses by “designing, implementing, and legitimizing a worldwide torture program.”

The report is sure to add more fuel to the ongoing debate on what action should be taken against those who participated in the torture of inmates.  Under former President Bush, the interrogation program at Guantanamo was deemed legit and legal despite protests from the International Committee of the Red Cross and numerous human rights groups.  But the revelation of role that medical professionals played in supervising interrogation techniques such as water boarding and sensory deprivation also reignites the debate over what should happen to doctors who participate in such programs.

The connection between doctors and human rights abuses committed by military and police is one that stretches throughout the twentieth century.  Doctors and other medical professionals played a central role in aiding human rights abuses during World War II under both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.  More recently, military dictatorships have made use of medical help in their torture programs, most notably in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile.  Allegations against doctors have also been made in apartheid South Africa, communist East Germany, and Turkey while under military rule.  Yet despite the evidence that doctors and other medical professionals have often been called upon to witness and assist in torturing prisoners, very few have ever been judicially tried for their actions.  Instead the matter has been largely left to the medical boards to deal with through professional sanctions, but even then there has not been a strong record of successful action against accused health professionals.

Following the exposure of the crimes committed by Nazi doctors during World War II, the World Medical Association adopted the Declaration of Geneva to serve as a more modern version of the Hippocratic Oath.  Since its adoption in 1948, it has been revised several times but as it stands today, there eleven commitments that doctors take under the Declaration, two of which are worth mentioning here.  Commitment eight of the Declaration states, “I will not permit considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient,” while commitment ten reads, “I will not use my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat.”  It is because of commitments like these that we give our trust to doctors and generally hold them to a higher standard.  But these are the exact values that doctors at Guantanamo Bay ignored, and despite the political ramifications they should be held accountable for violating not only the law but the duty to humanity they swore to uphold within their profession.

Guatemala can be considered a vanguard country in ensuring the right to food, in that it has developed legal and institutional protections designed to protect and promote this right. Several national laws exist to promote and ensure the right to food, such as the law (SINESAN) to operationalize the national food security and nutrition plan (PSAN), which declares the right of every person to adequate food.  The right to food is further supported through Guatemala’s ratification of international instruments codifying the right, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and the supremacy that the Guatemalan Constitution lends to such international legal documents.  The government has dedicated institutional resources to the issue, such as establishing the Center for Food Security and Nutrition Information and Coordination (Centro de Información y Coordinación en  Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional (CICSAN)) and a council to implement the national food security and nutrition plan (CONASAN.)  Legally and institutionally, Guatemala seems to have taken positive steps forward to ensure the right to food within its borders.  

Yet, despite legal protections and persons charged with the task, the latest reports from UNICEF indicate that Guatemalan children suffer from some of the highest malnutrition and stunting rates in the world.  Children of Mayan decent are the hardest hit, and in some rural Mayan communities, up to 80% of the children suffer from malnutrition.  The Guatemalan government has conducted a partial national mapping of hunger and malnutrition, a necessary step for targeting right to food programs to those most immediately in need.  In spite of this, the government does not seem to be reaching the Mayan population.  The Economist argued on August 27 that, financially, Guatemala is wealthy enough to have reduced its hunger levels, and points out that other Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil have all made improvements in reducing child malnutrition that Guatemala has yet to match.  The fact that Mayan children suffer disproportionately and that government commitment and financial resources have been mobilized to address the issue points to continued ethnic discrimination and the harmful and lasting effects of income disparity. 

The case of child nutrition in Guatemala seems to illustrate the problem of good laws and dedicated institutions failing to reach the most marginalized members of society.  The Mayan population, and especially the rural female Mayan population, remain the poorest Guatemalans.   It is no coincidence that the Mayan population were also the main victims of Guatemala’s recent decade of civil war: the current child malnutrition problem demonstrates that this population continue to suffer the conflict’s after effects, such as a persistent and extreme income gap between Mayan groups and the rest of the population.  What is needed is renewed government commitment to the most vulnerable populations.  Children in particular are forever damaged by malnutrition, and thus the case of child hunger should be treated with urgency, as its ill effects cannot be reversed.  Guatemala has already made legal commitments to the right to food, and has established institutional capacity to tackle the issue.  The Guatemalan government should take steps to reach the most endangered populations from within this existing framework.

New aerial photographs show at least four illegal logging camps inside the Murunahua Reserve in Peru, Survival International reported yesterday.  The Reserve is located deep in the Amazonian rainforest of Peru and was established to protect the uncontacted Murunahua Indians.  The illegal logging camps present a huge threat to the Murunahua Indians, who like their neighboring ancestors, do not have the same immunity to common diseases that we do.

The report comes just a day after Peru confirmed that eight members of the Amazonian Machiguenga tribe tested positive for Swine Flu.  They are the first confirmed cases among Amazonian Indians.  But their infection could lead to much greater problems, as the Machiguenga do have intermittent contact with much more isolated, and vulnerable, Amazonian tribes.

Uncontacted tribes are exactly that - those that have not been in contact with modern outsiders.  They are extremely vulnerable to disease because they do not have the same immunity to Western diseases, or even everyday pathogens that we carry with us unknowingly.  It is not uncommon for an uncontacted community to lose 50% of its members when contact does occur.  This occurred not too long ago within the Murunahua people, when some Murunahua tribes lost half their people to disease after coming into contact with illegal loggers in their territory.  In fact, the threat outsiders present is a story that has played out repeatedly throughout the history of Western colonization of the Americas.  However, with the advent of the human rights movement, these tribes now have some protection against the outside world that inevitably poses such a threat to them.  The devastation of these Murunahua communities ten years ago is what led the Peruvian government to set up the Murunahua Reserve for their protection.

These days another threat has emerged, that of capitalist gain.  Illegal logging brings outsiders in close proximity with uncontacted tribes, usually to the tribe’s peril.  In addition to possible diseases that the loggers may bring with them, there is also a history of violent conflict between indigenous tribes and loggers, each who see the other as not deserving of the land.  Confrontations between loggers and Amazonian Indians in Peru have sent tribes pouring across the border into neighboring Brazil.  This in turn creates new land struggles and new problems, which unfortunately are often very easy for governments to ignore.

Part of the problem is the very nature of the situation.  In 2007, the UN adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which protects the political, social, cultural, and economic rights of indigenous people around the world.  But a brief reading of the Declaration illustrates how little it does to help uncontacted tribes.  One example: the Declaration encourages governments to take action to protect indigenous rights in consultation with indigenous communities. This in an excellent approach for the vast majority of indigenous cultures throughout the world.  But the entire point of uncontacted tribes is that they are uncontacted; making contact is one of the greatest threats we pose to them.  The best thing to do, at least for time being, is commit ourselves to leaving them alone.

That means taking a stand against logging and oil exploration in the Amazon, and helping Amazonian governments find other paths to economic prosperity.  It also means taking responsibility for the threat that we unwittingly pose.  While it may seem odd that there are people who live completely separate from the world that 6.5 billion people inhabit, this is the situation we find ourselves in.  And whether they know it or not, the Murunahua people and their uncontacted brethren enjoy the same human rights guaranteeing health, safety, and cultural prosperity that we enjoy.

A major militant group in Nigeria’s troubled Niger Delta announced a sixty day ceasefire yesterday after the government released a top commander earlier in the week.  The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has been behind most of the region’s recent troubles and are responsible for several high profile kidnappings and attacks on oil installations in the area.  In May, the military launched a counteroffensive that successfully destroyed some MEND bases, but also found civilians unwillingly caught in the middle of the conflict.  The release of top official Henry Okah was a key demand made by MEND, and along with the political amnesty that the government offered last month, many are hoping that this long-standing conflict may be coming to an end.  But many other observers have serious doubts since the major issue plaguing the oil-rich region is not political problem, but rather an economic one.

Viable oil deposits were first found in the Niger Delta in 1956 and were quickly exploited by foreign oil companies.  This being Nigeria, the government took its share as well.  Subsequent legal amendment under various regimes reduced the property rights of the Delta’s indigenous population, forcing many to abandon their agricultural land in favor of oil exploration with little to no compensation.  The end result has been that while Nigeria is today one of the world’s largest exporters of oil, the local population whose land once sat above the oil have consistently become poorer over time, not benefiting from the oil production and having to deal with the massive ecological damage that has resulted.

The militant groups in the Delta seek the economic opportunities that they have been denied and proper compensation for their land in the form of oil royalty back payments from both the government and key international oil companies, namely Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron.  While they advocate this position in less than savory ways (kidnapping, property destruction, murder, etc.), they are legitimate grievences that are not likely to go away.  A recent report from Amnesty International summed up the situation by stating:

Pollution and environmental damage caused by the oil industry have resulted in violations of the rights to health and a healthy environment, the right to an adequate standard of living (including the right to food and water) and the right to gain a living through work for hundreds of thousands of people . . . The Niger Delta is one of the world’s 10 most important wetland and coastal marine ecosystems and is home to some 31 million people. It is also the location of massive oil deposits, which have been extracted for decades by the government of Nigeria and by multinational oil companies.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) describes the region as suffering from “administrative neglect, crumbling social infrastructure and services, high unemployment, social deprivation, abject poverty, filth and squalor, and endemic conflict.” This poverty, and its contrast with the wealth generated by oil, has become one of the world’s starkest and most disturbing examples of the “resource curse”.

The problem with the amnesty offered by the government is that it does not address any of these problems.  Instead, it appears to be a superficial attempt to bribe the militants to stop fighting, thereby allowing oil production to return to previous levels.  The current conflict has reduced oil production in the region by as much as 20%, but has the potential to be much worse.  Currently, it does not appear that the government plans to open a dialogue with MEND or any other militant group, but instead expects them to accept the amnesty and continue living under these conditions.  This will not work.  But it is also not just the responsibility of the Nigerian government to find a solution to the problem.  The Niger Delta represents just one more place where “blood oil” trumps all other considerations and where foreign corporations are allowed to act with impunity.  This is a mindset that we need to change not just individually, but as a global society.  Otherwise, it is unlikely that conflict will truly end in the Niger Delta and we will continue to support these massive human rights abuses with every tank of gas we purchase, and that should be unacceptable.

Third of May 1808 - Francisco Goya

Behind 88794 is a name that is no stranger to controversy, that puts her words into actions, who is not afraid to push the boundaries of truth and moral conviction to help those oppressed.

Locked up behind bars, this woman locked horns with President George Bush, had called for his impeachment during his reign, and has introduced bills in Congress to eradicate the use of depleted uranium munitions.

She is a staunch supporter of Katrina victims who were denied the right to cross a bridge to safety by the police.  And perhaps most controversially, she had advanced the possibility that President George Bush knew in advance that 9-11 was going to happen; a position this blogger does not share.  Nonetheless…differing opinions spark debate.

Her name is Cynthia McKinney, and earlier this month she wrote an impassioned letter from an Israeli jail cell, calling for justice where there is none, hoping that like so many who passed before her, that somehow and somewhere someone would notice.

Richard Falk did.  He is the United Nations human rights investigator and special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories.  He called the seizure of McKinney’s boat by the Israelis as “unlawful” and said that Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza is a direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits any kind of collective punishment against an occupied people.

McKinney, along with 20 other human rights activists, boarded a boat loaded with 3 tons of medical supplies.  McKinney also carried a suit case full of crayons for a Gaza children ravaged by war and the blood lust of an Israeli army that had indiscriminately bombed this city under siege.

The colored pencils, along with the medical supplies, were confiscated by the Israeli Naval Force.  And McKinney, found herself behind bars for six days.

Here is her letter:

This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies - and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation ‘Cast Lead’ [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

During Operation Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16’s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full scale outright genocide. U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs - new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water … It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime … I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?

Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza’s children could color & paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be healed, and that Gaza’s bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream … like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better … The once proud, never colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel only after they arrived Israel told them “there is no UN in Israel.”

The police here have license to pick them up & suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world’s first Jews and Christian. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.

The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for 6 months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and ‘yes we can’ were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what they’ve done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?

Let’s change the world together & reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State’s Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.

For more information, check out www.freegaza.org

It’s been almost a week now since the Pope told a reporter that condoms increase the number of AIDS cases.  And yet the evidence is incontrovertible, the science sound, the facts are there.  Condoms prevent the spread of infectious disease.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is explicit

Latex condoms, when used consistently and correctly, are highly effective in preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

So here we are.  Africa, 25 million have died from AIDS.  Catholic nuns working on the ground, are hoping the Pope will change his views.  One Catholic nun said the Pope is condemning people to death.

The Pope, in his infallible wisdom, has chosen a path that will lead to more suffering, to more abuse, and more AIDS victims.  His words will further alienate and victimize those who suffer domestic abuse, those who are coerced into sex, those who sell their bodies to get by. 

A few years ago I met a woman in a Nairobi slum.  She was dying from AIDS.  Her 9 year old daughter couldn’t prostitute herself because she was too emaciated and underfed. This is the reality where poverty, hunger, and fear are conjoined, where the nexus meets with the daily horrors beyond our own making. 

It transcends the ideology of an old man obsessed with his own faith, gilded in gold in a palace thousands of kilometers away, and rhetoric that if taken seriously would throw humanity back decades and centuries.

On the other side of the world in Brazil, another 9 year old girl was condemened.  She was raped by her step-father and had she given birth to the set of twins developing in her tiny uterus, she would of died. 

The twins were aborted and now the Vatican has excommunicated her mother.  But the bastard who raped her was spared the Cardinal’s wrath.  The child, tormented and abused both physically and psychologically has to suffer from this backward ideology supposedly based on compassion.   It is both inhumane and unjust. 

And yet on the ground, the Church has done amazing work to alleviate the suffering.  It is unfortunate that men in power, disconnected and deaf to reason, should dare determine the fate of so many.