Ashlee Betteridge writes on international surrogacy, and whether commercial surrogacy in a poor, developing country can ever be a fair or acceptable option.
“…the voice that we perhaps most need to hear in this debate is the voice of women who work as surrogates. As governments scramble for answers, both in developed and developing countries, it is this voice that is missing from policy debates.”
Minister for Foreign Affairs, The Hon Julie Bishop MP, asked the human rights subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade to inquire into and report on the human rights issues confronting women and girls in the Indian Ocean – Asia Pacific region.
Given the wide scope of the terms of reference for this inquiry, we focused on addressing the family and sexual violence epidemic in Papua New Guinea (PNG).
This submission was prepared by Ms Ashlee Betteridge, Research Officer at the Development Policy Centre, The Australian National University, and Dr Kamalini Lokuge, Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University.
Download full submission [pdf].
Interview with Daisy Plana of the PNG Family and Sexual Violence Case Management Centre on gender-based violence in PNG.
Human rights are enough reason alone to push for an end to early and forced marriage. Groups such as Human Rights Watch have been working on this issue for many years. Still, campaigners now cite a whole host of other reasons to end the practice, such as the improved health, education [pdf] and poverty alleviation outcomes when girls marry later. Child marriage is now squarely framed as a development issue.
Read the full post on child marriage on the Devpolicy Blog.
(Image from Too Young To Wed)
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has released a damning Compliance Panel Review (CPR) report of a controversial railway redevelopment project in Cambodia, which was supported by Australian aid.
Activists have long challenged the project’s forced resettlement of thousands of poor families who had made makeshift homes along disused railway tracks, alleging inadequate compensation, threats, harassment, inadequate facilities at resettlement sites and adverse impacts on livelihoods.
The CPR report [pdf], released on Friday, agreed with many of these concerns and found that the project was non-compliant with a number of ADB safeguards.
Women and girls have obviously been coping with menstruation for a long time without the aid of fantastic plastic convenience. They make do, using cloth rags or other methods like straw, leaves, newspapers, mud or ash, slipping out of the home at night time to bury used rags in the dirt or finding private places to wash and hang them out to dry.
Read the full post on the Devpolicy Blog.
This post was also republished by Magdalene Indonesia.
(Photo credit: Echawalu Photography)
Blog post on the findings of a new UN report on gender based violence in Asia and the Pacific.
Read the post here.
To mark the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, I wrote this post for the Development Policy Centre Blog on the economic costs of gender-based violence. The blog calls for more comprehensive measures of the full costs of violence at the macro and micro levels and for stronger policy action.