Taipei Watcher: Correct Yourself
Taipei Times - Taipei, Taiwan, 7/31/2014
The legislature on July 29, 2014, approved the re-nomination to the Control Yuan of Gau Fehng-shian, a woman known for her close ties to anti-gay religious groups. In the previous column, Taipei Watcher questioned the attempts by some Christian extremists to use the public school system to ‘correct’ homosexual students’ sexual orientation. The pseudo-scientific ‘conversion (or reparative) therapy’ - treatments that aim to change a person from homosexual to heterosexual - is highly controversial. Numerous cases have shown that such forced conversion is unethical, and can lead to a number of negative consequences, such as delayed acceptance of self-identity, depression and even suicide.
Saffronising Education: Harsh Vardhan`s Sex Education Ban to Batra`s Books
The Hindustan Times - New Delhi, India, 7/30/2014
India appears to be witnessing a renewed battle to win the minds of the next generation of students. From Health Minister Harshvardhan`s reservations about sex education to Dinanath Batra`s books being introduced as supplementary texts in Gujarat; from efforts by Sangh Parivar to `correct` the study of the past to intensifying polarisation among academics, the politics of pedagogy is back.
Chonalyn’s Birth Needs RH ‘Full Blast’
Manila Standard Today, Philippines, 7/30/2014
The birth of the 100 millionth Filipino baby should compel the national government to ‘go full blast’ on the Reproductive Health Law, advocates said on July 29, 2014. Former House Minority Leader and former Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman warned that an increasing population imperils finite resources and strains limited budgets. ‘100 million Filipinos is no joke. This means that the country is not able to significantly fulfill the reproductive health needs of our people, especially of our women in relation with family planning, and of our youth when it comes to RH education,’ said Elizabeth Angsioco, national president of the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines.
Lack of Awareness Among General Public in Goa About HIV/AIDS
The Times of India - Panaji, India, 7/29/2014
The parent teacher association (PTA) body`s refusal to allow admission to children living with HIV in a Rivona school has brought into sharp focus the lack of awareness about HIV and AIDS among the general population in the state though Goa State AIDS control society (GSACS), a nodal department entrusted with enlightening people about HIV, is active for over a decade. Raj Vaidya who works for Positive People, a NGO working for HIV and AIDS, says besides creating awareness, more importantly, GSACS will have to now work towards doing away with stigma, and discrimination that people living with HIV face.
China Activists Fight Gay `Conversion Therapy`
BBC News - Shanghai, China, 7/28/2014
Gay rights activists in China are preparing for what they say could be a legal milestone in their fight to stop homosexuality being treated as an illness. A long campaign in Europe and America has been successful in shifting the medical consensus against such treatment, and now campaigners want Chinese doctors to follow suit.
How to Decode, Identify And Prevent Child Sexual Abuse
The New Indian Express - Bangalore, India, 7/28/2014
‘It`s like Pandora`s box, the malaise of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA),’ says Meera, a member of the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPR), is on the Advisory Committee debating the Juvenile Justice Act and Protection Of Children against Sexual Offences (POSCO). The story of those forgotten children needs to be told too, she emphasises as she shares with City Express her guidelines for parents and educationists to ensure that what happened with the six-year-old child at Vibgyor does not happen again. It is ignorance that leads to CSA more often than not.
Gender Dimensions of Bonded Labour in Brick Kilns
The Daily Times, Pakistan, 7/28/2014
In Pakistan, bonded labour exists in several forms, especially in the rural areas and in certain disadvantaged geographic regions. The gender dimension of the problem has so far remained largely ignored. While both genders are vulnerable to bondage, it is the women who bear the brunt of advances and loans received by their men folk. As women have little influence in the household’s monetary matters and are often illiterate, with restrictions on their mobility, they are vulnerable to the subjection of bonded labour.
WHO Identifies China`s HIV Challenges
Shanghai Daily - Beijing, China, 7/27/2014
China faces multiple challenges in its fight against HIV and AIDS, including low testing coverage and high infection rates among men who have sex with men, said a World Health Organization (WHO) official. Bernhard Schwartlander, the World Health Organization (WHO) Representative in China, detailed the state of HIV and AIDS in the country in an article posted on the agency`s official website. The article coincides with the 2014 International AIDS Conference being held in Melbourne.
Fear Over The City
The Hindu, India:, 7/27/2014
To the chilling timeline of child rape in India was recently added the sexual assault on a six-year-old child by her teacher in a Bangalore school. The incident exposed the extreme vulnerability of children in Indian schools, which operate without an enforceable protocol on child protection, sparking massive protests, and prompting the Karnataka government to issue a 70-point guideline for schools in the State. Of the 38,868 reported cases of child rape recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau from 2009 to 2013 around the country, the biggest share, by all accounts, is of children raped in their own homes or neighbourhood, says Vidya Reddy, director, Tulir Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse, Chennai.
RI, Oz Launch Joint HIV/AIDS Project
The Jakarta Post, Indonesia, 7/25/2014
A new joint initiative has been launched to increase HIV testing and treatment uptake in Indonesia, where government efforts to roll out universal access to antiretroviral (ARV) therapy have been hampered by low numbers of people presenting for HIV testing. The project is funded by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, with AU$2 million over four years. It is a collaboration between the World Health Organization (WHO), the Kirby Institute, the Indonesian Health Ministry and the National AIDS Program, as well as three leading Indonesian universities - Padjadjaran University in Bandung, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta and Udayana University in Bali.
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