http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090601/ten_things

From the Nation:

1 Write letters to the editor and op-ed articles in your local paper calling on the government to cut or end subsidies that encourage large agribusinesses to overproduce grains and dump their surpluses on the developing world at sub-market prices. This ultimately places poor communities at the mercy of volatile global commodity prices. Learn more at The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy for more information.

 2 Ask your representatives in Congress to demand that more foreign food aid be in the form of cash and training rather than food. Farmers in the global South know how to grow food but lack the resources, inputs and tools to farm effectively, develop markets and compete in the world marketplace.

 3 Learn the specifics of what makes products “fair trade.” Buy them where available. Download “Green America’s Guide to Fair Trade” for a definition of “fair trade” and a list of organizations that follow these specifications.

 4 Conserve energy. With a reduced demand for fuel, global commodity prices–which spiked as the cost of fuel for shipping rose dramatically last year–can remain more stable. This is important because while sending food to poor countries is not the ultimate solution for ending hunger, Food Aid has a role to play due to the desire for variety in food supplies. And, more importantly, natural disasters or political instability will always cause humanitarian emergencies where the flow of aid is crucial.

 5 Pressure the Obama administration to come up with a renewable energy policy that does not stress ethanol and other biofuels. As demand for biofuels has grown over the past few years, farmers in the developed and developing worlds have set aside more and more land for fuel production, degrading the environment and reducing food for human consumption.

 6 Eat less meat. Every pound of meat produced requires sixteen pounds of grain; food given to farm animals each year could feed the world’s hungry with plenty to spare. Search “Diet for a Small Planet” and “We Feed the World”.

 7 Support grassroots projects that advance sustainable agriculture at the community level. Organizations like American Jewish World Service partner with grassroots organizations in the global South that use sustainable farming techniques.

 8 Persuade your local editorial writers to cover hunger in a way that focuses on economic rights rather than food scarcity. Emphasize that the underlying causes of poverty are political instability, joblessness, gender inequality, illiteracy and limited access to education, loss of land, disenfranchisement, forced migration and preventable epidemics. These hamper local food production and sustainable development. Click here for current coverage.

 9 Demand a worldwide reduction in the sale of pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified seeds, which benefit large agribusinesses like Monsanto because they do not reproduce, forcing farmers to purchase new seeds year after year. Watch Future of Food for more information.

10 Advocate for food security as a human right. Even though the United Nations has declared that nutrition is a universal right, many member nations have adopted policies that reinforce a global system whereby food is treated as a commodity to be bought and sold by speculators.

Read “The Politics of Hunger.” Remember that global hunger is a local problem, a feminist problem, a socioeconomic problem and, most urgently, a political problem that can be overcome.

CONCEIVED by Walter Mosley with research by Rae Gomes

Call on governments to lift HIV travel restrictions
Introduction

In advance of the United Nations High Level Meeting on AIDS in New York from June 10- 11, the World AIDS Campaign and the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance urge organizations to sign onto a letter from civil society to the UN missions and Heads of State of countries that impose travel restrictions on people living with HIV.

We join with other members of civil society in condemning such restrictions as discriminatory and in contradiction to the commitments made through the 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and the 2006 Political Declaration. We urge governments that continue to impose travel restriction on people living with HIV to lift these, whether short or long-term.

ignatures will be collected via email until June 5. To sign on, email the name of your organization and country to universalaccess2010@icaso.org. Signatures will also be collected during the civil-society pre-meeting taking place the day before (June 9) of the High Level Meeting in New York.

background:

When the HIV and AIDS epidemic was identified in the early 1980s and
little was
understood about the disease, many countries established travel
restrictions in an
effort to prevent the virus from entering their borders. Such measures
included
mandatory HIV testing for persons seeking entry to the country and
negative HIV
status declarations by would-be entrants. Based on these mandatory tests and
declarations, a number of countries have excluded from entry people living
with HIV
or people suspected of being infected.

Despite the medical advances that have made HIV a manageable disease, and
a general
consensus from the public health community that travel restrictions are
inappropriate
and discriminatory in nature, over 70 countries still impose some form of
restrictions, citing two main reasons – to protect the national public
health and to
avoid the economic costs of providing health care and social assistance to
people
affected by HIV and AIDS.

These travel restrictions can take on different forms, including
restrictions on
people wishing to enter or remain in a country for a short stay such as
business,
personal visits or tourism; or for longer periods, such as labour migration,
employment, asylum or refugee resettlement, or study. Of the countries with
restrictions in place, some 10 countries bar people living with HIV from
entering or
staying in their country for any reason or length of time.[1] Countries
requiring
special attention include: Burnei, China, Iraq, Qatar, South Korea, Libya,
Oman,
Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sudan, Yemen, United Arab Emirates and the United
States.

The 2001 Declaration of Commitments on HIV/AIDS saw governments agreeing
to “enact,
strengthen or enforce as appropriate legislation, regulations and other
measures to
eliminate all forms of discrimination against, and to ensure the full
enjoyment of
all human rights and fundamental freedoms by people living with HIV/AIDS”,
and in the
2006 Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS governments committed to
intensifying efforts
to eliminate all forms of discrimination directed towards people living
with HIV and
AIDS. Also, the report of the consultation on international travel and HIV
infection
of the WHO, April 1987 states “HIV-related travel restrict ions have no
valid public
health rationale and may in fact undermine HIV prevention and other
efforts to stop
the epidemic”.

Unfortunately, these commitments are not being kept.
What can YOU Do?

As part of a wide coalition of civil society organizations, we encourage
you to sign
on to letter below and take other steps as an individual or as an
organization to
join the call to countries to lift any form of HIV- related travel
restrictions
policies and/or laws.

Sign on to the letter below by sending your organization’s name and
country to
universalaccess2010@icaso.org no later than June 5.

Find out the status of any travel restrictions imposed by your country.
The list of
countries with HIV-related travel restrictions is always changing. Check
up-do-date
information before you advocate with a specific government. (For more
detailed
information country-by country, visit http://www.eatg.org/hivtravel
www.eatg.org/hivtravel or www.aidshilfe.de)

Use the upcoming 2008 UN High Level Meeting on AIDS as a moment to press
for new
commitments (and action) by your own government and others to remove travel
restrictions. This could be a very positive example of progress.

Use the 2008 UN High Level Meeting on AIDS to begin to strategize about
national
level action to oppose HIV-related travel restrictions.

Inform the media about the issue and the discriminatory practices of many
countries.

Do not hold international conferences in countries with HIV-related travel
restrictions. Future UN High Level Meetings or Reviews on AIDS should not
be held in
countries with such restrictions.

Raise awareness among your networks and constituency about the travel
restrictions.
Many people are not even aware that such restrictions exist.

Advocate with others: Create a letter writing campaign to officials in your
government. You can advocate at all levels of government: from your local
representatives all the way up the President or Prime Minister. Work
together with
other religious communities, civil society organizations and networks of
people
living with HIV. Make sure you let the media know about your plans.

Lobby your government officials to speak out against HIV-related travel
restrictions
at 2008 UN High Level Meeting on AIDS.

Text of the Letter:

Civil Society Letter on HIV-related Travel Restrictions Addressed to the
UN Missions
and Heads of State in Countries with Restrictions

Dear Excellency,

As we approach the 2008 UN high-level meeting on AIDS, all governments and
the global
community are called to review the progress and performance in achieving
universal
access to treatment, care, support and prevention by 2010.

As leaders within civil society, we are writing to ask for your urgent
attention and
leadership in removing your country’s travel restrictions (short or
long-term) that
restrict access to people, based solely on their HIV status. These
restrictions are
discriminatory and are contrary to the commitments made through the 2001
Declaration
of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and the 2006 Political Declaration.

We are asking you to consider announcing in New York, plans to lift your
country’s
restrictions. This is the right thing to do. It does not create financial
or other
burdens. And as civil society, we are ready to stand with you in making and
implementing such a commitment. This would be a noteworthy step and a sign
of real
leadership at the high-level meeting on June 10 -11 in New York.

Overview

HIV-related travel restrictions are not something new. They have existed
since the
beginning of the epidemic, but are increasingly obsolete and
discriminatory in a
world with more access to treatment and ever-increasing mobility.

Today, there are more than 70 countries that still impose some form of
HIV- specific
restrictions on the entry and residence of positive people. Of these, some 10
countries bar HIV positive people from entering or staying in their
country for any
reason or length of time. There are close to 30 countries that deport
people once
their HIV infection is discovered. More than 70 countries do not have HIV
specific
travel restrictions. For the remaining 49 countries, the information is
either
contradictory or unavailable.[2]

The most visible impact is when HIV positive people-against the principle
of the
greater involvement of people living with HIV-are denied entry into
countries where
major conferences or meetings on HIV are being held. This robs people
living with HIV
from opportunities to contribute their experience and expertise, while also
diminishing the credibility and accomplishment of the conference or
meeting. This
situation is very problematic at UN high-level meetings on AIDS held in
the United
States, which has a complete ban on the entry of people living with HIV
(HIV positive
delegates, civil society representatives, UN staff, religious leaders,
media, trade
union members, and business people). In order to enter the United States
legally to
attend such meetings, people living with HIV must disclose their status in a
discriminatory and humiliating waiver process. The often lengthy and
intrusive
process to receive a visa waiver is all the more stigmatizing and
discriminatory,
when a mark is placed in a person’s passport, indicating the waiver and
its purpose.

However, in terms of largest impact and numbers of people affected, HIV-
related
travel restrictions are felt most by labour migrants. Prospective migrants
are either
barred from entering a country when determined to be HIV positive through
a mandatory
pre-departure HIV test, or are deported when required to take a periodic
HIV test
during their residence abroad, and test positively. Rarely is this type of
HIV-testing confidential or linked to any other services, either in a
person’s
country of origin or destination. This exposes to and places people who
are already
highly vulnerable in situations of great discrimination and economic
devastation.
Similarly, people living with HIV, who want to cross borders for the
purposes of
family reunification, suffer from the same restrictions.

Fulfilling existing commitments

The 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS saw governments agree to
“enact,
strengthen or enforce as appropriate legislation, regulations and other
measures to
eliminate all forms of discrimination against, and to ensure the full
enjoyment of
all human rights and fundamental freedoms by people living with HIV/AIDS”
(para.58).
The 2006 Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS saw governments commit to
intensifying
efforts towards these ends (para.29). These commitments are not being kept.

The realities are: HIV-related travel restrictions have no valid public
health
rationale and may in fact undermine HIV prevention and other efforts to
stop the
epidemic. This has been definitively stated by the World Health
Organization and the
World Health Assembly on several occasions. [3] HIV-specific travel
restrictions are
discriminatory and contribute to the stigmatization of people living with
HIV.
HIV-related travel restrictions are anachronisms, and highly inappropriate
in the age
of globalization, increased travel, treatment for HIV, and national and
international
commitments to universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and
support.
There is no demonstrated proof that the spectre of a huge negative
economic impact on
countries without travel restrictions is valid. In fact, the evidence
points to the
opposite in a country like Brazil, where there is universal access to
treatment and
there are no travel restrictions. There has been no flood of HIV positive
travellers
(short or long-term) streaming across the borders to claim treatment,
placing a
burden on Brazilian society. Long-term travel restrictions that single out
HIV, as
opposed to comparable conditions, are also discriminatory. Any restriction
based on
fear of costs must be based on an individual determination that such costs
will
actually be incurred. Any human rights or humanitarian concerns, such as
need for
asylum, should always trump economic considerations. The commitment of
organizations
and governments to the GIPA principle (Greater Involvement of People
Living with HIV
or AIDS) is regularly undermined by HIV-related travel restrictions, when HIV
positive speakers, resource people and leaders, cannot enter countries to
take part
in meetings, programs or planning.

UNAIDS and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are
working
together against such restrictions and have created an International Task
Team on
HIV-related Travel Restrictions, which comprises representatives of
governments, UN
agencies and civil society, including people living with HIV. They will be
issuing
their report and recommendations later this year, as well as providing
tools to
support governments in taking the steps to remove their restrictions. The
Global Fund
decided that it would not hold Board Meetings in countries that restrict
short-term
entry of people living with HIV or require prospective HIV-positive
visitors to
declare their HIV status on entry.

What you can do We ask you to rescind HIV-specific travel restrictions;
and instead,
take steps to ensure access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support
for mobile
populations, both nationals and non-nationals. We are asking you to use
the upcoming
2008 UN high-level meeting on AIDS as a moment to announce the elimination
of these
restrictions by your government. We are asking you to take up the issue of
travel
restrictions with other governments where they are applied to your
citizens seeking
to travel or migrate. We are asking you to meet with people living with
HIV, who
will be in New York at the high-level meeting to hear first-hand their
experience of
discrimination and stigmatization caused by travel restrictions. We
implore you to
not hold international conferences that are relevant to the response to
HIV and AIDS
in countries with HIV-related travel restrictions. Future UN high-level
meetings or
Reviews on AIDS should not be held in countries with such restrictions.

Yours respectfully,

[list of organizations]

This letter can also be downloaded at:
http://www.e-alliance.ch/media/media-7297.doc
For more information, please visit:
EATG website: http://www.eatg.org/hivtravel www.eatg.org/hivtravel

Deutsche AIDS Hilfe website: www.aidshilfe.de

Keep the Promise Campaign Bulletin of the EAA: The EAA website:
http://www.e-alliance.ch/media/media-7264.pdf#page=1&view=Fit

Ua2010.org:
http://www.ua2010.org/en/UA2010/Universal-Access/Travel-Restrictions

*********************************************************************************************************************

For past Action Alerts and Bulletins from the HIV and AIDS Campaign,

see http://www.e-alliance.ch/newsletters.jsp

The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance is a broad international network of
churches and
Christian organizations cooperating in advocacy on global trade and HIV
and AIDS. The
Alliance is based in Geneva, Switzerland. For more information, see
http://www.e-alliance.ch/

*********************************************************************************************************************

[1] This information is taken from the web site of the European AIDS
Treatment Group,
and based on a survey which was originally done by the German AIDS
Federation in 1999
and has been continually updated. The information has not been independently
verified. See http://www.eatg.org/hivtravel/

[2] This information is taken from the web site of the European AIDS
Treatment Group,
and based on a survey which was originally done by the German AIDS
Federation in 1999
and has been continually updated. The information has not been independently
verified. See http://www.eatg.org/hivtravel/

[3] Report of the consultation on international travel and HIV infection.
Geneva,
World Health Organization, April 1987; WHO/SPA/GLO/787.1.
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/1987/WHO_SPA_GLO_87.1.pdf; Statement on
screening of
international travellers for infection with Human Immunodeficiency Virus,
WHO,
WHO/GPA/INF/88.3 (1988).; WHA Resolution 41.24 Avoidance of discrimination
in relation
to HIV-infected people and people with AIDS (1988)

Bring Life Saving Global AIDS Legislation to a Vote Now

I was on the news last night representing ARDC (African Refugee Development Center). 

Check out the “featured expert commentary” on this link: http://www.plosntds.org/home.action Or rather after this week, it is here: http://www.plosntds.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pntd.0000160 

From an email from the one.org campaign:

On the Record Petition

As a member of ONE, I write to ask you to go on the record on where you stand on fighting extreme poverty and global disease that affect the one billion people around the world.

Alleviating suffering and tackling the root causes of global poverty will be defining issues for the next President of the United States and deserve your full attention. I hope you will respond to this letter with your plans to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, eradicate malaria, improve child and maternal health, achieve universal primary education, and provide access to clean water and food, as well as a personal message about how you plan to lead on the fight to make poverty history.

We are only one year away from Election Day 2008. The time to go on the record on extreme poverty and global disease is now. Thank you for considering this request and I look forward to your response.

http://www.one.org/ontherecord/ 

I’m not sure how/when I decided to just dump action alerts on here, but I since I’ve been too busy in the real world to write something about life here–I just want to make sure that you’re keeping up with the latest needs in social action and activism!— As you may know, the African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2007 addresses the health workforce crisis in Africa described by Dr. Daniel from Uganda (http://actnow-phr.org/campaign/support_african_health_workers/8bwd57krv635m6d?). Please send a message urging your Representative to co-sponsor the African Health Capacity Investment Act (H.R. 3812). This important piece of global AIDS legislation would authorize $600 million over three years to train new doctors and nurses in sub-Saharan Africa and give them incentives to stay in their home countries to fight the AIDS pandemic and address other pressing health issues, such as tuberculosis, malaria and maternal and child health. The African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2007 would be the first piece of legislation in the House of Representatives to address Africa’s health workforce crisis. By urging your Representative to strengthen health systems in Africa, you can help Dr. Daniel ensure that Ugandans and other Africans enjoy their right to the highest attainable standard of health.  To take action go here: http://actnow-phr.org/campaign/support_african_health_workers/8bwd57krv635m6d?

I think you should do something. I do not expect everyone to go off and spend time/their entire life living in a mud hut without running water and electricity (though you might be surprised how much you like it). You are not expected to quit your job and go and work for one of these organizations (http://www.idealist.org/if/as/Org/npo), nor do I expect you to live in here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/carrieteicher/1579314906/in/set-72157602170287079/). I constantly hear people saying they don’t know what to do or where to start. So here’s a place to start. Go to this site and be an advocate for health in Africa (http://actnow-phr.org/campaign/support_african_health_workers) or go here (http://www.savedarfur.org/content?splash=yes) and see what you can do to stop genocide in Darfur. Just do something.  

Kisumu and Kisii, Western Kenya

HIV/AIDS care and treatment is free for all Kenyans who need such care. However, apparently it is a popular belief by the medical staff that manage the patients that the staff should be paid better–so they collect an “unofficial fee” from the patients that they then pocket. So officially there is no financial barrier to care, just an unofficial one that dictates people’s reality on the ground.

There are “suggestion boxes” all over the place here. The government has decided that the best way to demonstrate to the world that they are in fact fighting corruption is to place suggestion boxes all over the country–you can see them everywhere from the entrance to the Kisumu District Hospital to on the metal support beam on the ferry that crosses Mombasa. Often the box is labeled, “The Anti-corruption” suggestion box. Of course many of the boxes have no bottom, or rather it has been removed, so if one were so ambitious as to suggest how we can end corruption, most likely the suggestion would fall into the open sewer or into the sea below.

Kisumu, Kenya

Kisumu is the third largest city in Kenya, but feels more like a sleepy town in the middle of no where. (I keep needing to redefine where “the middle of no where” is located, because once you’ve been to The Middle Of Nowhere, it is no longer a Nowhere but a Somewhere. Like since I’ve been to Timbuktu– it can’t possibly be no where…)

Anyway, Kisumu apparently was a hot spot to be in at the height of the Ugandan trans-east African railroad’s heyday because it connected land locked Africa with the port of Mombasa on the Eastern Kenyan coast. Kisumu though just has not had as much luck since the advent of better means of transportation of goods and people. It also hasn’t helped that the train has more or less discontinued service through Kisumu.

I spent time both at the Provincial and District hospitals of Kisumu. The Nyanza Provincial General Hospital (known locally as the “Russian Hospital” because it was apparently funded by the Russians back when making Africa red was a real concern) is somewhere it seems that one goes to when there are no other options left. It is more of a place of death than life, which is not so shocking when you have 4 beds in a room, each with 2 people per bed, plus another 4-6 people sitting on the floor–all admitted patients.

The first thing you notice at the hospital in the surgery ward is that the door to exit/enter the ward is a metal bar prison door that is locked from the inside with a hospital guard posted by the lock. Apparently the lock is both to keep patients in and to keep people who are not suppose to be in the hospital ward out (it is common for people to traditionally when staying in the hospital to bring their own food, etc with them and in recent years the hospital has decided that it wanted to curb this practice–yet has not taken up the slack often enough to provide food all the time, so many people still try to have relatives bring them food). Now why would you want to keep patients inside the hospital? Well naturally to ensure that they pay. One patient came in with a festering wound–just imagine necrosis of all the tissue in his arm that was already forming scar tissue ontop of all the embedded dead and bacterial laden tissue, and the wound needed to undergo surgery if the patient wanted to live and not die of sepsis. So because his case was deemed as an emergency they did the surgery, but he couldn’t pay for it. So rather than letting him go and try to find the money, he is being kept more or less a prisoner inside the hospital to ensure that the hospital gets paid. He can’t pay so he sits in the same room with other patients who have various degrees of gangrene and sepsis waiting. Eventually, I am told, the hospital realizes after a few months that they won’t get paid and will let him go. Another woman there had a similar story. She had meningitis and was given penicillin, even though she said she had a known allergy to penicillin. So she naturally went into shock and had to be intubated. She recovered from the shock, was given another non-penicillin antibiotic–but was not allowed to leave the hospital until she paid for the care that she received. Yes, it was care that she needed only because the medical officer on duty didn’t listen to her and caused her to need treatment, but she was apparently still responsible to pay. However, she wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital to go ask family and friends to borrow the money because she hadn’t paid. So when she finally borrowed the 8000 kenyan shillings and went to pay the hospital cashier–they told her that she now owed roughly 5 times that amount for the several weeks that she had stayed in the hospital as their prisoner. And so the cycle continues…