Today we kick off a series of blogs posts by and about members of the Our Bodies Ourselves Global Network who have adapted “Our Bodies, Ourselves” in their own countries, using a range of print, digital and social interactive formats for outreach and advocacy.

As part of its 40th anniversary celebration, Our Bodies Ourselves decided to honor its global partners by adding them to the Women’s Health Heroes Hall of Fame.

These courageous women join an impressive group of U.S. and global advocates — including midwives, student activists, abortion counselors, health care reform activists, bloggers, physicians — who have been nominated in past years by OBOS readers.

In this blog series, we’ll introduce you to some of our health heroes who are coming to Boston on Oct. 1 to attend the OBOS anniversary symposium, “Our Bodies, Our Future: Advancing Health and Human Rights for Women and Girls.”

The symposium is open to the public but seats filled quickly and there is now a long waiting list. The good news, though, is that the event will be broadcast live online, and we’ll soon post information for groups and individuals who would like to host viewing parties at their homes or schools. You can view panels featuring these extraordinary women and hear for yourself how they are working to transform the lives of girls and women worldwide.

The first posts in this series focuses on the work of Women and Their Bodies, a collaboration of Israeli and Palestinian women who are publishing Arabic and Hebrew resources based on “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” and the Research Group on Women and Laws in Senegal (Groupe de Recherche sur les Femmes et les Lois au Senegal, or GREFELS), which created the health book “Notre Corps, Notre Sante” for French-speaking Africa. In the coming weeks, you’ll meet our partners in Japan, Armenia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Turkey and India.

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to use the comments to ask questions about their work.

Guest post by Sarah Morison

It was not until I started working at the Global Justice Center that I learned that due to U.S. policy (not law, policy), it is almost impossible for a victim of war rape who becomes impregnated to have the option of abortion. That is because all humanitarian aid that the United States gives in areas of armed conflict to either governments or humanitarian organizations contains a blanket prohibition on any monies being used to provide abortions — or even information about abortion.

Yet under the Geneva Conventions, to which the United States has been a party for over 60 years, “wounded and sick” civilian victims of armed conflict are absolutely guaranteed the right to “comprehensive and non-discriminatory” medical care. The Global Justice Center is therefore contending that the United States is in violation of the Geneva Conventions by maintaining its current abortion restrictions on humanitarian funds in areas of armed conflict.

Our current initiative is the Geneva Project, whereby we are harnessing the power of the Geneva Conventions to tackle the horrible problem of sexual violence deliberately used as a weapon and strategy during armed conflict in many parts of the world. (For more background information, see the GJC’s legal brief, “The Right to an Abortion for Girls and Women Raped in Armed Conflict” [pdf].)

No doubt you have read about the epidemic of war rape going on in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Sudan, and that occurred during the genocides in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, and the intransigent conflicts in Columbia. During the recent uprising in Libya, the military was given Viagra to help them carry out rapes against the women living in areas of armed conflict. Right now, ethnic women are being raped by the military in Burma.

The military strategy of raping women is intended as a way of destroying families, communities and cultures. In Rwanda, girls and women were deliberately infected with HIV. In Yugoslavia, girls and women were gang-raped (typical form of war rape), impregnated, and then deliberately detained so as to force them to give birth to a child of a different ethnic group.

International courts have classified war rape as a war crime, and also as a form of torture. For those girls and women who become impregnated, the torture often continues, both psychologically and physically. Denial of abortions in this context frequently leads to desperate measures such as suicide or dangerous self-induced abortions.

We have learned that women being treated for war rape at internationally funded clinics often beg doctors for abortions but are turned away because these clinics can’t risk losing funding. By the time they reach these clinics, the time is often well past for using emergency contraception, which must be taken within a short period of time after the rape. Sometimes several donor countries give aid to an organization providing services to rape victims, but if U.S. funds are pooled with other countries’ funds, the effect is that all such funds are restricted.

The 62nd anniversary of the Geneva Conventions is Friday, Aug. 12. An international “August 12th Campaign” is underway, and we are asking organizations and individuals from around the world to commit to writing President Obama on Aug. 12 to urge him to lift these restrictions through an executive order (the current restrictions were put in place in the waning hours of the Bush administration). Many organizations — both prominent and small — throughout the world have committed to the campaign, which is heartening.

There is also a way for individuals to endorse our campaign, by signing an online petition to the President. I am asking you to read this petition and, if you agree this policy should be changed, add your name to the list. Consider sending the link to your friends and posting your endorsement on Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you all for reading this and for considering giving your support to this critical campaign.

Sarah Morison is an attorney at the Global Justice Center in New York City. The GJC advocates for the implementation of and compliance with international human rights laws and humanitarian laws (laws relating to war), especially those relating to women.

From dorms at USF to justice for women around the world, here are a few items of interest:

The United Nations’s UN Women group released a report, “Progress of the World’s Women: In Pursuit of Justice,” which looks at the legal rights of women around the world, barriers to accessing and navigating the justice system, and the impact of war/conflict on women, among other issues. It also includes ten recommendations for making justice systems work for women.

The University of South Florida has begun offering students gender-neutral housing options in response to a transgender student who reported hostility and harassment in campus housing. The school is going to offer several housing options and allow students to indicate male, female, or transitioning on their campus housing applications.

NPR’s All Things Considered ran a piece yesterday on mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Mozambique; there is a related piece on breastfeeding and HIV in developing nations.

Childbirth Connection has launched the Transforming Maternity Care blog with Amy Romano, formerly of Science & Sensibility and part of the editorial team for the forthcoming edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” It looks like the blog will focus on quality improvement, patient advocacy, and shared decision-making in maternity care.

Boston area readers may be interested in an event happening tonight at the Cambridge Hospital: Mara Hvistendahl, author of “Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men” will be speaking about her new book. Mara will be joined by OBOS executive director Judy Norsigian, who will be highlighting some of the reproductive rights-related work of OBOS’ global partners and speaking about the forthcoming edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”

The event begins at 8 p.m. and will take place at the Learning Center A/B on the 3rd floor of The Cambridge Hospital, 1493 Cambridge Street. Hope to see some of you there!

The International Confederation of Midwives is asking member associations, midwives and their supporters to take to the streets on May 5 — International Day of the Midwife — to raise the profile of maternal mortality and access to midwifery care before, during and after childbirth.

From the ICM: “Over 340,000 women die each year, with millions more suffering infection and disability as a result of preventable maternal causes. The ICM, alongside UN agencies, WHO and a range of other international partners, is committed to addressing maternal mortality and morbidity through greater access to essential midwifery care worldwide, particularly in developing countries where 90% of maternal deaths occur.”

The walk is the first stage of the Road to Durban, where midwives from around the world will gather at the ICM Triennial Congress in South Africa (June 19-23). A new publication, “The State of the World Midwifery Report,” will be released during the gathering. It will provide new information and data gathered from 60 countries in all regions of the world, to:

• examine the number and distribution of health professionals involved in the delivery of midwifery services;
• explore emerging issues related to education, regulation, professional associations, policies and external aid;
• analyse global issues regarding health personnel with midwifery skills, most of whom are women, and the constraints and challenges that they face in their lives and work;
• call for accelerating investments for scaling up midwifery services, as well as “skilling up” the respective providers.

Close to OBOS headquarters, the Massachusetts affiliate of the American College of Nurse-Midwives is sponsoring a 5K walk in Cambridge (pdf). The walk will begin between 6 and 6:30 p.m. at the Cambridge Boat Club at 2 Gerrys Landing Road. The event is free, but onsite registration is required.

Other walks from West Virginia to Montana are listed here. If you’re involved in a walk in your community, feel free to leave a comment with the details.

For information on maternal health in the United States, see Amnesty International’s 2010 report “Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA.” A one-year update was released earlier this spring (both are pdf’s). Amnesty has more information available online.

Project Prevention, a program formerly known as C.R.A.C.K. that seeks to bribe/coerce women with drug addictions into be sterilized or accepting long-term birth control (that may not be medically appropriate) through financial incentives, started out in the United States by advertising quick cash for addicted women who surrendered their reproductive options and control. The program often targeted communities of color.

Needless to say, the program is vile and racist — founder Barbara Harris has been widely quoted comparing women to dogs and their children to unwanted animals, saying, “We don’t allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children.”

The program has been widely criticized in the United States. Lynn Paltrow and National Advocates for Pregnant Women have been outspoken in their concerns, noting:

NAPW’s examination of the program makes clear that, far from providing a useful response to problems associated with drug use and pregnancy, C.R.A.C.K. instead acts as a dangerous vector for medical misinformation and political propaganda that has significant implications for the rights of all Americans. Under the guise of openness, voluntary choice, and personal empowerment, C.R.A.C.K. not only promotes a vicious image of all drug users, it has won significant support for a program and an ideology that is at the core of civil rights violations and eugenic population control efforts.

The program had recently expanded to the United Kingdom, where it also has been criticized by organizations and bloggers.

Now Harris has apparently set her sights on South Africa, where she had plans to target women living with HIV. Project Prevention has apparently already set up in Kenya.

The Open Society Blog has some coverage of these developments, noting that “Project Prevention seems to have no knowledge of antiretroviral medications (ARVs) or PMTCT [preventing mother-to-child transmission], since they claim that getting HIV-positive women on long term birth control is ‘the only way’ to ensure there are fewer babies born with HIV.”

The head of the National Health Department in South Africa has reportedly said that the group will not be allowed to operate in the country, stating:

It’s a no, no, no! We have a Constitution in this country that causes us to respect human rights — including the right to choice. So there is no way that we are going to accept or to allow anyone coming from anywhere in the world to come in and force sterilization on any women in this country — because that will be against the Constitution. So it’s not acceptable and it’s a big ‘no’.

If only we so strongly prohibited these actions in this country.

Last June, prior to the Women Delivery conference in Washington, D.C., UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund) held a symposium on Strengthening Midwifery.

A report from that conference (PDF) is now available. It reports on speakers, presentations and issues from the event, including sessions on the role of midwives in addressing Millennium Development Goals on maternal and newborn deaths and HIV in pregnant women, topics in global midwifery education, midwifery regulation and standards of care, policy development, and other issues.

The report includes a call to action for governments to strengthen the midwifery workforce, build capacity for evidence-based training, ensure and regulate standards of practice, and support the creation of professional associations. Pledges for action from the World Health Organization, UNFPA, USAID and other agencies are also reported.

From Amnesty International:

Beginning September 20 at 9 a.m. EST, the start of the Millennium Development Goals Summit, the Maternal Death Clock began to tick – keeping track of the total number of maternal deaths in the world.

September 20-22 world leaders are gathering in New York to chart a course forward on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – the framework that will guide the fight against global poverty through 2015.

The one goal aimed at decreasing maternal deaths has fallen far short of where it needs to be to meet the MDG target of cutting maternal deaths by 75% by the target date.

Hundreds of thousands of women and girls continue to die in pregnancy and childbirth each year. Most of them live in developing countries and low-income communities. In fact, one woman dies in childbirth every 90 seconds.

Join Amnesty International in making sure that human rights are at the heart of the MDGs!

If you go to the site, there’s a petition, more information, and code for embedding the death clock widget.

The World Health Organization, with UNICEF, UNFPA and The World Bank, has released a new report on trends in global maternal mortality from 1990-2008. I haven’t read the full report yet, but according to the press release, “the number of women dying due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth has decreased by 34% from an estimated 546,000 in 1990 to 358,000 in 2008.”

Although this is great progress, the release points out that more work needs to be done:

The progress is notable, but the annual rate of decline is less than half of what is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of reducing the maternal mortality ratio by 75% between 1990 and 2015. This will require an annual decline of 5.5%. The 34% decline since 1990 translates into an average annual decline of just 2.3%.

by Kiki Kalkstein, Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE)

Earlier this month, I attended the Women Deliver Conference in Washington, D.C ., on behalf of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE). After a jam-packed three days of plenary sessions, chairman’s sessions, and more than 100 concurrent sessions, participants left the conference reinvigorated and ready to take action to work toward fulfilling Millennium Development Goal #5: Reduce maternal mortality and achieve universal access to reproductive health.

After speaking with hundreds of participants, one thing was made very clear to me — people not only want female condoms, but they believe that female condoms are a vital tool in decreasing maternal death, improving maternal health, and promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights.

I had countless conversations with participants from all over the world who were thrilled we were there talking about and promoting the female condom. As I shared information about the Prevention Now! Campaign (CHANGE’s initiative to increase access to existing prevention methods, especially female and male condoms), their message came through loud and clear — we want female condoms, and we want them now.

I spoke with men and women of all ages, and again and again they expressed interest in female condoms and inquired about how to increase access in their own countries. A doctor from Kenya said that women who come to his clinic consistently ask for female condoms, and he doesn’t have any to offer. A doctor from Nepal took all the information he could from our booth, and came back with his colleagues to get more. Some participants asked how they could launch a female condom program in their own countries. Female condoms are in demand.

Access to contraception is critical for preventing maternal deaths, but sometimes high-level decision makers do not make that connection. The female condom puts women in control of their own health by enabling women to delay pregnancy and space out births, all of which decrease the risk of maternal death and disability.

Effective family planning programs are not only fundamental to maternal health, they also allow women and families to better manage household and natural resources, secure education for all family members, and address each family member’s healthcare needs. Participants at Women Deliver conference acknowledged the benefits of the female condoms and recognized it as a vital tool for improving maternal health globally.

Related posts:
* Expanding the Female Condom Market
* FC2 Female Condom Available in the U.S.

Kiki Kalkstein is the program assistant at the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE). She previously designed and implemented public health education programs both domestically and internationally, including a rural community outreach program with the Uganda Village Project focused on increasing awareness around obstetric fistula. She also designed and implemented at the University of California at Berkeley “Sex and Sustainability: Reconnecting Population and Women’s Empowerment,” a campus program designed to increase awareness about unmet family planning needs in developing countries.

Nancy Chodorow’s “The Reproduction of Mothering” was an instant feminist classic when it was published in 1978. One of the most visionary conclusions was her call for men to take an equal role in the caretaking of children. If they don’t, she argued, women would grow up with a distorted perspective on their own relationships with men.

More than 30 years later, Chodorow’s call appears as challenging as ever — at least in the United States, where parental leave is still unpaid (putting us behind 177 nations, including Haiti and Afghanistan, that provide all women, and in some cases men, income and time off after the birth of a child) and only 12 weeks long, which discourages even willing men from taking over child-rearing duties.

Four years before the publication of Chodorow’s landmark text, however, Sweden had already become the first country to replace maternal leave with parental leave, and Sweden has continued to break new ground by spurring a revolution in male attitudes toward and male participation in childcare. Katrin Bennhold of The New York Times writes:

85 percent of Swedish fathers take parental leave. Those who don’t face questions from family, friends and colleagues. As other countries still tinker with maternity leave and women’s rights, Sweden may be a glimpse of the future.

In this land of Viking lore, men are at the heart of the gender-equality debate. The ponytailed center-right finance minister calls himself a feminist, ads for cleaning products rarely feature women as homemakers, and preschools vet books for gender stereotypes in animal characters. For nearly four decades, governments of all political hues have legislated to give women equal rights at work — and men equal rights at home.

Swedish mothers still take more time off with children — almost four times as much. And some who thought they wanted their men to help raise baby now find themselves coveting more time at home.

But laws reserving at least two months of the generously paid, 13-month parental leave exclusively for fathers — a quota that could well double after the September election — have set off profound social change.

Bennhold goes on to describe the positive effects of this change, such as a lowering of divorce rates and an increase in shared custody when a divorce does occur. It has undeniably transformed what it means to be a man.

Birgitta Ohlsson, European affairs minister, puts it in the terms of an old feminist maxim: “Now men can have it all — a successful career and being a responsible daddy. It’s a new kind of manly. It’s more wholesome.”

For more on how father’s leave in Sweden came to be so popular, read this side piece on politician Bengt Westerberg, who in the 1990s “championed the introduction of the first dedicated father month — 30 days of paid parental leave that could not be transferred to the mother — to encourage reluctant men like himself to do their bit and overhaul Swedish society in the process.”

Despite the fact that Sweden and other countries are far ahead of the United States when it comes to supporting fair and equitable childcare, it’s important to remember that progressives in the United States have been fighting for some form of paid parental leave for almost 100 years.

Yes, 100 years. As Sharon Lerner reminds us in the Washington Post:

As far back as 1919, when the Model T was switching from a crank to an electric starter, the U.S. government came close to signing on to an International Labor Organization agreement, supported by 33 countries, that said women workers should receive cash benefits in addition to job-protected leave for 12 weeks in the period surrounding childbirth. That same year, Julia Lathrop, the chief of the Labor Department’s children’s bureau, issued a report on international maternity leave policy in which she decried the United States as “one of the few great countries which as yet have no system of State or national assistance in maternity.” She had recently returned from Europe, where Germany and France had paid-leave laws that had been in place for decades.

The entire article is a very enlightening history lesson — revealing the twisted politics that have held back justice and common sense for far too long. For more on that subject, check out Lerner’s new book, “The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation.”

by June Tsang

“Every individual has a right to life… and to the integrity of their person.”
– Mali Constitution

On Thursday, April 8, Sini Sanuman and Healthy Tomorrow — sister organizations campaigning against female genital mutilation (FGM) in West Africa — will hold a screening in Cambridge, Mass., for the film “Secret of the Dawn.”

The documentary covers the story of the organizations’ efforts to stop excision in West Africa, in particular in Mali, in a culturally competent manner.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 100 to 140 million women are living with the consequences of FGM, also known as female genital cutting, female genital modification, and female circumcision. Internationally, FGM is recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. However, the practice is still prevalent in villages and cities of West Africa.

Within their society, women who have undergone FGM share a bond and are viewed as courageous. The practice also marks a woman as desirable and worthy of marriage. The act involves the removal of all or part of the clitoris and sometimes the narrowing of the vaginal opening — not only to increase pleasure for their future husbands, but for the societal opinion of aesthetically pleasing vaginas.

In an interview with Our Bodies, Our Blog, Susan McLucas, secretary general of Sini Sanuman and director of Healthy Tomorrow, said the film “follows a number of threads to show the complexity of the issue of FGM.”

Sini Sanuman utilizes a number of methods in villages in Mali to spread information about the negative health impacts of FGM, including song, dance and music videos.

The organization also recruits religious leaders, village chiefs, and former performers of excision. One video, “I Abandon,” features 17 former excisers who, during the chorus, throw their knives in a hole.

Above is a poster that Sini Sanuman distributes to its network of activists and partner groups. Here it is in French (as it appears in Mali). Click the poster to read the English version.

While this movement recognizes that a major barrier to preventing FGM is the lack of political rights, Sini Sanuman’s campaign focuses on educating people about the medical consequences of FGM, including life-threatening difficulties in childbirth, severe bleeding, incontinence, and high risks of HIV and tetanus.

Sini Sanuman and Healthy Tomorrow have succeeded in stopping excision in nine villages in Mali so far and are compiling a list of more than 300 villages around Mali that have stopped FGM with other NGOs. This list has inspired the government to organize a Forum of Villages in February, which was televised, The forum adopted a resolution encouraging the legislature to pass a law to ban FGM.

McLucas recounts a story about girls who did not undergo FGM singing at the ceremony in the village of Missalabougou, the fourth village to stop the practice.

“They were a chorus of unexcised girls singing about how happy they were to have been spared,” she said. “They couldn’t carry a tune, but it still made very good TV footage and was very moving.”

“Secret of the Dawn” covers the journey of Sini Sanuman in its struggle to stop excision in women across Mali by relating to them through music, their own political and religious leaders, community meetings, and through the experiences of women who live with the consequences of FGM. The movement to stop excision is gaining strength and the hope is that Mali will soon follow the path of its neighbors and outlaw FGM.

The screening will take place at 7 p.m. in the Cambridge Library in Central Square (take the red line to Central Square). Following the screening, McLucas will discuss the film and the Sini Sanuman organization.

June Tsang, an intern at Our Bodies Ourselves, is studying social policy and public health at Brandeis University.

View all Women’s Health Heroes. Voting closes May 14. Background info here.

Entrant: Maureen Reinsel
Nominee: John Varallo, MD, MPH, Senior Technical Advisor

Obstetricians and gynecologists choose to dedicate themselves to women’s health, but that alone does not qualify them as a Women’s Health Hero. A hero humbly exceeds the average expectations to create true and lasting positive change. Dr. John Varallo, through his selfless and untiring contributions to women’s health in the United States, Guyana, Tanzania, Uganda, Belize, Guatemala, and Australia, is a Women’s Health Hero.

While I know him through his work on cervical cancer prevention and treatment in Guyana, it is far from his only contribution to women’s health globally. Dr. Varallo works with the most vulnerable women, and inspires others to join him through education and collaboration.

Dr. Varallo has contributed to improved prevention and treatment of cervical cancer, particularly among HIV positive women. Cervical cancer, caused by the sexually transmitted Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), is a preventable disease that kills an estimated 253,500 women worldwide annually (National Cervical Cancer Coalition, www.nccc-online.org). The burden of disease is particularly onerous among HIV positive women, who have a more difficult time clearing the virus from their system and in whom the cancer moves significantly more quickly.

Dr. Varallo’s efforts have led to a considerable expansion in coverage of cervical cancer prevention, detection, and treatment. In Guyana alone, he has trained 23 physicians, advance practice nurses, and registered nurses in one year to detect and treat pre-cancerous lesions. His work in Guyana has led to the Ministry of Health instituting a national cervical cancer prevention and treatment program, and he was the principle author of the country’s cervical cancer prevention and treatment policy and guidelines.

Providers trained by Dr. Varallo have screened more than 5,000 women in one year, providing approximately 800 women with preventative treatment. In addition to his work in Guyana, Dr. Varallo has trained health care providers in cervical cancer prevention and treatment in five other countries, including the United States.

Read the rest of this entry »

“In Haiti, as is always true in the aftermath of a major disaster, in addition to the urgent need for what we traditionally consider the pillars of immediate aid – food, water, shelter, medical care – there are needs that are specific to women, particularly for pregnant women and mothers with new babies and the need to address the added vulnerability to violence that women face when government infrastructures are dysfunctional,” writes Lucinda Marshall at Feminist Peace Network.

Our Bodies Ourselves has compiled a list of organizations focused on addressing the health needs in Haiti, particularly the needs of women and girls, during and beyond the initial aid effort. Additional background articles and press releases are also included.

These organizations have contacted us directly, or we have received emails from people on their communication lists. Please add groups we may have missed in the comments. Thank you!

• MADRE
  Working with its partner in Haiti, Zanmi Lasante, to bring humanitarian aid overland into the country. Teams of healthcare workers from the project have established a functioning supply chain through the Dominican Republic and are currently delivering medical aid to those most in need in Haiti.

  Read more about MADRE’s model, which ensures that women in communities are integral to designing and carrying out relief efforts.

• Global Fund for Women
  Read the Global Fund’s solidarity statement sent to their sisters in Haiti, and learn how you can support long-term work there through their crisis fund. More information about the Global Fund’s recent grantee partners in Haiti is available here.
• Circle of Health International
  COHI’s team of women’s health providers and public health professionals are leaving for Haiti on Jan. 19 to conduct a Rapid Health Assessment, in order to identify and begin addressing women’s most critical health needs. Recent estimates show that there are 37,000 pregnant women among the 3 million people affected by the disaster.

  COHI defines its target population as women in crisis, specifically partnering with women surviving conflict and disaster, and has a tradition of collaborating with locally based, grassroots organizations when invited into a country context to contribute to women’s health programming.

• International Planned Parenthood Federation
  100% of donations collected will go directly to PROFAMIL’s operations, so they can get their clinics and mobile health units up and working as soon as possible.
• Partners in Health
  PIH has been working in Haiti for 20 years. Its focus is tri-fold: to care for patients, to alleviate the root causes of disease in their communities, and to share lessons learned around the world. Read an op-ed by Paul Farmer, PIH co-founder, in Sunday’s Miami Herald: “If Haiti is to ‘Build Back Better’“
• Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders
  Learn more about their current efforts in Haiti. Donation information is available here.
• United Nations Population Fund
  UNFPA’s immediate humanitarian response includes delivering emergency reproductive health kits that contain essential drugs, equipment and supplies to provide life-saving services to pregnant women. UNFPA will also work to ensure that women and girls have access to basic hygiene supplies so that they can live with dignity, even amidst the worst circumstances.
• Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom
  Provides an extensive list of non-governmental organizations as well as United Nations and government contacts working in Haiti.
• V-Day
  V-Day is initiating a Haiti Rescue Fund immediately to be ready with funds for the V-Day Haiti Sorority Safe House in Port Au Prince that provides shelter to women survivors of violence and their children, as well as psychological, legal and medical support.

For additional reading:

• Top 10 critical needs facing those affected by the earthquake in Haiti, compiled by the Women’s Refugee Commission
• “Protection of Human Rights Must Accompany Relief Efforts in Haiti” – press release from Amnesty International.

  “Before the devastating earthquake, Haiti was unable to effectively protect human rights and in particular, women and girls from sexual violence. Unless action is taken now while relief efforts are ongoing, the situation is only likely to deteriorate,” said researcher Gerardo Ducos.

• “Haitian Women: Pillars of the Economy, and of Resistance” – by Masum Momaya, Association for Women’s Rights in Development
  – adapted from the film “Poto Mitan“

Make yourself comfortable. You’re not going to want to move for the next 15 minutes.

Rachel Maddow invited Richard Cohen, who claims he can “cure” homosexuals, on her show Tuesday night. Passages of his book “Coming Out Straight” — unscientific, debunked, ridiculously accusatory passages — are being used to justify proposed legislation in Uganda  that calls for executing gay men and women either living with HIV or who are “serial offenders” (whatever that means).

Anyone convicted of a homosexual act faces life in prison under the Uganda bill, and anyone who ”aids, abets, counsels or procures another to engage of acts of homosexuality” faces seven years in prison.

Cohen insists that he is not a proponent of the legislation, but Maddow doesn’t let him off the hook:

“I realize I was taking the risk of helping promote you and the way that you think about these things by putting you on the air,” says Maddow, “but I do think that you’ve actually got blood on your hands.”

For more background on what’s going on in Uganda and the connection to influential right-wing members of Congress, read the transcript of this “Fresh Air” (NPR) interview with Jeff Sharlet,  author of “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy