From the March 2010 Muslim Women’s Newsletter. My advice is to telephone Malaysia’s embassy and tell the ambassador how you feel about this violation of human rights. In Washington, the number is 202-572-9700. Thanks to Moya Muller for suggesting this form of protest. I called this morning and spoke with the secretary to the ambassador, since he is traveling, and registered my personal protest. If enough people call, it may make an impact on that government’s policy.
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Malaysia caned three Muslim women convicted of adultery by a court of Islamic law, the first time that women in the multi-faith country have been subject to the punishment.

Last August, a similar sentence against a Muslim woman caught drinking was deferred amid complaints that Shariah courts had overstepped the mark. That punishment is still pending.

Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said he wanted to publicize the case of the three women, who also received short jail terms, because of too much hype over the earlier case.
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Great thanks to Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, Former United Nations Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN, for sending me the following opinion piece by him published by IPS on March 9, 2010. It addresses lack of implementation of the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1325 (attached), dealing with protection of women and children during peacekeeping operations and armed conflict and involvement of women in building peace. See http://www.ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.aspx?new=7271

UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (PDF, 39 KB)

1325 implementation – Where is Secretary-General’s leadership?

Exactly to the date, 10 years ago, on the International Women’s Day, on behalf of the UN Security Council as its President, I had the honor to issue a statement that brought to global attention the unrecognized, under-utilized and under-valued contribution women can make to preventing war, to building peace and to engaging individuals and societies to live in harmony. The members of the Security Council recognized that peace is inextricably linked with equality between women and men and affirmed the equal access and full participation of women in power structures and their full involvement in all efforts for peace and security.

For full article, visit:
http://www.ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.aspx?new=7271

Thanks to Jim Poyser for this article on Vertical Farming.
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Together the world’s 6.8 billion people use land equal in size to South America to grow food and raise livestock—an astounding agricultural footprint. And demographers predict the planet will host 9.5 billion people by 2050. Because each of us requires a minimum of 1,500 calories a day, civilization will have to cultivate another Brazil’s worth of land—2.1 billion acres—if farming continues to be practiced as it is today. That much new, arable earth simply does not exist. To quote the great American humorist Mark Twain: “Buy land. They’re not making it any more.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-rise-of-vertical-farms

You may want to read “The 2008 Food Price Crisis: Rethinking Food Security Policies.” Thanks to Frank Arundel for letting me know about that United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report from June 2009. The link where you can download that report is: http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/gdsmdpg2420093_en.pdf

A longstanding proposal for the creation of a special U.N. agency for women – officially called a “gender entity” – is apparently moving at the sluggish pace of a paralytic snail.

The proposal – originally conceived by a high-level panel of U.N. experts back in 2006 – has remained a theoretical exercise for so long that a coalition of women activists is spoofing it in a fake electronic newspaper being circulated at a U.N meeting on gender empowerment here.

The fictitious headlines in the newspaper say it all: ‘New U.N. Women’s Rights Agency Created (Not true);’ ‘Search for the head of the U.N. Women’s Agency (A long way off); ‘New Women’s Super Agency Attracts Donors’ (Hardly); and ‘Much Awaited but Slow Reforms’ (Closer to truth).

For full article, visit:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50538

Against the backdrop of continued widespread gender discrimination worldwide, the European Union (EU) has urged Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to “urgently” speed up the creation of the proposed new U.N. agency for women.

The proposal for a “gender entity” was recommended by a high-level panel back in 2006 and approved by the 192-member General Assembly last year.

But for the last four years, the proposal has been kicked around in the corridors of the United Nations, short of implementation.

For full article, visit:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50226

After more than three years of political foot-dragging, the 192-member General Assembly adopted a historic resolution Monday aimed at creating a new U.N. agency for women.

The decision to create a separate powerful body to deal exclusively with gender-related activities comes years – or decades – after the United Nations created specialised agencies to deal with specific issues, including children, population, refugees, food, environment, education, health and tourism, among many others.

Currently, there are four existing women’s U.N. entities in the world body: the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM); the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues; the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women; and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW).

For full article, visit:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48439

Thanks to Wendi Stein for the link to this blog posting by the Chronicle of Higher Education on the eGame funded by a grant from the UN Population Fund to Population Media Center, with the work on the game being done by students and faculty at Champlain College’s Emergent Media Center. As I have previously reported to this list, the game is designed to move young men away from committing violence against women, and the project is now part of the UN Secretary General’s UNite Campaign to End Violence against Women.
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The statistics relating to the world’s socially and economically-distressed women are staggering.

According to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), more than 8,000 women were raped by warring factions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) last year while over three million young girls are at risk of undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) worldwide.

The U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that out of nearly 1,000 sexual abuse and over 1,500 domestic violence cases reported in Sierra Leone last year, there wasn’t a single conviction.

For full article, visit:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50389

Eight years ago, Nasreen (not her real name) walked into the office of the Daily Khabrain newspaper in Lahore, Pakistan, and demanded justice. She stripped off her clothes, revealing a black and blue body covered with wounds and cigarette burns. She’d been gang raped. With tears in her eyes, she said, “My husband hired three men and got me raped in front of him because I was tired of his abuse and demanded the divorce that Islam gave me a right to. He didn’t even respect me as the mother of his children. . .. I just want justice in the name of God.’

Nasreen was just one of millions of women who suffer acid attacks, rape, forced marriages and other unimaginable forms of violence around the world. One out of every three women worldwide is physically, sexually or otherwise abused during her lifetime.

For full article, visit:
http://www.boston.com