In Kenya, the women said, “NON-NEGOTIABLE: my body my womb my rights”. Nine years later, they were heard. Why did it take so long?

December 5, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Nine years ago, almost to the day, five women wearing t-shirts walked into a Nairobi court. On the back, the t-shirts read: “NON-NEGOTIABLE: my body my womb my rights.” On the front, the t-shirts read, “END FORCED AND COERCED STERILIZATION OF WOMEN LIVING WITH HIV”. In September, finally, Kenya’s High Court ruled in their favor, awarding each 3,000,000 Kenyan shilling, or approximately $20,000. This is the second such case in Kenyan history. In December 2022, another Kenyan woman was also awarded 3,000,000 shilling, also for a sterilization without informed consent. So, 3,000,000 shilling, or $20,0000, is the going rate of `compensation’ for violence against women.

We wrote about the case nine years ago. We began writing about forced sterilization in 2012, concerning a case in Namibia, a case to which we returned in 2014. At that time, we argued that the decision in favor of the three women who had sued the State was “a victory for HIV-positive women, for all women, everywhere”. A decade later, we wonder if that declaratino of victory was perhaps a bit premature. Why does it take nine years for the High Court in Nairobi to decide the case, especially when one considers that the final decision absolves the State of all responsibility?

In 2014, we wrote, “The news this week from Chhattisgarh, India, is tragic. At latest count, 15 women have .died in a `sterilization camp’. Fifty others are in hospital, with at least 20 in critical condition. At first the operations were widely described as `botched.’ After only preliminary investigations, the response moved from `botched’ to `criminal’ and `corrupt’. Finally, the reporting has landed on how Indian this all is. It’s not. Forced sterilization of women is a global phenomenon, actually a global campaign, and it needs to be addressed, immediately. The women, all poor, of Chhattisgarh are part of a global public policy in which women’s bodies are, at best, disposable and, more often, detritus.” It’s now 2023, moving into 2024. Why did it take nine years for a High Court to decide?

In late September 2014, California formally banned forced and coerced sterilization of women prisoners … again. Then Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill No. 1135 into law. The bill read, in part: “This bill would prohibit sterilization for the purpose of birth control of an individual under the control of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation or a county correctional facility, as specified.” Not forcing sterilization on women prisoners seemed pretty straightforward. Some would even say a no-brainer. And yet, that law took a lot of brains, and muscle and organizing and history. Think about the brains, muscle, organizing and history it took and takes for a group of women, say in Kenya, to discover they’ve been sterilized, without their knowledge much less informed consent; find the means to take the State and so-called health providers to court; and then to wait, not idly but rather mobilizing the entire time, for nine years.

That all happened before the Kenyan women went to court. Since then …

On February 26, 2015 the Virginia legislature agreed to pay $25,000 in compensation to those who had suffered forced sterilization during the Commonwealth’s decades long adventure in eugenics. What’s the rate of exchange between 2015 and 2023? Apparently $25,000 to $20,000.

In March 2015 in South Africa, 48 women living with HIV and AIDS responded to the indignity and abuse of forced sterilization. Represented by Her Rights Initiative, Oxfam, and the Women’s Legal Centre, 48 women who had suffered forced sterilization in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal came forward and lodged a formal complaint. These 48 `cases’ were from 1986 to 2014. Their case has been reported on, fully researched, and documented. As of now, they have received neither compensation nor a formal apology of any sort.

In March 2019, all major parties in Japan agreed to pass a measure that would “deeply apologize” and offer compensation to victim-survivors of forced sterilization. The compensation would be a one-off payment of around $28,700. Now we know the value of life in Japan … and beyond. What is the price of a `deep apology’ when made to women?

On May 26, 2022, Colombia’s newly elected President Gabriel Boric announced, “I would like to start by apologising to Francisca ….  for the serious violation of your rights and also for the denial of justice and for all the time you had to wait for this. How many people like you do we not know? It hurts to think that the state, which today I have the honour to represent, is responsible for these cases. I pledge to you, and to those who today represent you here in person, that while we govern, we will give the best of each one of us as authorities so that something like this will never happen again and certainly so that in cases where these atrocities have already been committed, they will be properly redressed.”. Boric went on to promise to provide specialist training to medical workers on HIV/AIDS to curb discrimination and to ensure that judges and lawyers are aware that affected women have a right to reparations. Who is Francisca?

In 2002, a 20-year-old, married rural woman known as Francisca discovered she was pregnant. She and her partner were elated. When, early in the pregnancy, Francisca went in for tests, she discovered that she was HIV positive. She immediately began a protocol of antiretrovirals. She had a caesarean delivery, successfully, and the child was HIV negative. That child, now 22 years old himself, is still HIV negative. When Francisca emerged from the surgery, a nurse informed her that the surgeon had sterilized her.  Francisca never asked for or wanted to be sterilized and had never consented. In 2007, Francisca sued the doctor. In 2008, the case was dismissed. In 2009, the Center for Reproductive Rights and Vivo Positivo took the case, on Francisca’s behalf, to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In August 2021, the Chilean government signed a settlement accepting responsibility and offering something like reparations: a housing subsidy and healthcare for both Francisca and her son as well as a commitment to raise awareness of HIV and reproductive rights … after thirteen years.

In Peru, from 1996 to 2001, the Peruvian government, under the leadership of Alberto Fujimori, forced at least 2000 indigenous women to undergo forced sterilization … all in the name of family planning. In 2018, Fujimori and his accomplices were informed they would be facing charges. That case basically ended in mistrial. In September 2023, the same month in which the Kenyan women heard they would be receiving `compensation’, the daughters of Celia Ramos, who died in 1997 days after being forcibly sterilized, learned the Inter-American Court of Human Rights will hear the case.

In all of these cases, the justification, if any was even given, included public health, family planning, protection of the individual women. Society must be protected. In each case, the procedure was conducted by trained medical personnel. Women have been subjected to the torture of forced sterilization for a myriad of reasons and, ultimately, for no reason at all. You want to know why it takes the court so many years to adjudicate these women’s complaints? You want to know why it takes so long for these women to find even a modicum of justice? No reason at all.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: BBC)

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Julia Quecaño Casimiro, Veronica Baleni and the struggle for farm workers’ and small-scale farmers’ dignity

November 22, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Julia Quecaño Casimiro

It turns out it’s not the meek who shall inherit the earth, but rather those who have been mistakenly deemed as meek by the seemingly powerful. This is especially true of those who work the earth, day in and day out. Consider the tales of Julia Quecaño Casimiro and Veronica Baleni. Julia Quecaño Casimiro is a seasonal or migrant farm worker in England; Veronica Baleni is a small-scale farmer in South Africa. Consider their stories and imagine the conversation their tales weave together.

Julia Quecaño Casimiro is Bolivian. She hopes to study biochemistry. To pay for her studies, she went to England to work as a cherry picker, where, the recruiters told her, she would earn about £500 a week and that she would have to repay no more than $1,000 , or £800, for the flight.  After a month, when Casimiro left the farm, she was broke and homeless. Last week, she sued her employers, Haygrove, claiming unlawful deduction of wages, unfair dismissal, discrimination and harassment. Haygrove is one of the UK’s biggest fruit producers. At first, she was given no shifts, then barely given a shift the following week. Then Haygrove told the workers they had to pay £1,500 in six weekly £250 instalments for their flights to the UK. For many, that demand was the final straw. When government inspectors visited Haygrove, they found and reported numerous violations. The State did nothing. So, last week, Julia Quecaño Casimiro filed a complaint, becoming the first person on a seasonal worker visa to take a farm to an employment tribunal.

Julia Quecaño Casimiro had worked before on farms, in Bolivia and Chile, but she had never experienced the kind of intimidation and exploitation that she saw and was subjected to at Haygrove. Julia Quecaño Casimiro’s parents are small-scale farmers in Bolivia. She grew up on farms and has worked on numerous farms. Julia Quecaño Casimiro knows a thing or two about how farms should be run. She also knows what slavery is: “As soon as I started, I saw that it was exploitation. It was modern slavery.”

Veronica Baleni is a small-scale farmer in Riverlands, near Malmesbury, about 45 minutes by car from Cape Town. Veronica Baleni is one of over 100 small-scale farmers who work on a large piece of land in Riverlands. Many have been working this land for generations, in some cases for over a century. Veronica Baleni grows vegetables and has over 200 fruit trees.

The land is owned by the government’s Housing Development Agency, HDA. In May 2022, HDA initiated eviction proceedings, at first allegedly against three farmers but ultimately against the whole population. The farmers resisted, secured legal representation and went to court. On Monday, the Judge in the Western Cape High Court ordered HDA to withdraw their application for eviction and strongly urged the agency to enter into “meaningful engagement” with the community. According to Veronica Baleni, the real impediment for the farmers, both as farmers and as citizens of the Republic of South Africa, is ownership of the land.

In both instances, the ones threatened are assumed, by their aggressors, to be powerless, uninformed, helpless and hopeless. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Workers know the score and they know abuse, exploitation and slavery when they see it. Small-scale farmers know that those who work the land have a right to fully inhabit the earth on which they walk, in which the toil. The fruit of one’s labor must include and support the dignity of those who labor, from the fruit farms of the United Kingdom to the fruit farms of South Africa and beyond.

Farmers celebrate their victory in court

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit 1: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism / Nacho Rivera)

(Photo Credit 2: Groundup / Liezl Human)

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For women in England and Wales, “safety in custody” continues to mean self-harm

September 11, 2023 by Leave a Comment

January 2015: “On Thursday, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice issued its Safety in custody quarterly update to September 2014. The report is grim.” September 2018: “In July, the Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales released their annual report, and it was predictably grim, especially for women prisoners.” February 2021: On Thursday, January 28, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice issued its Safety in Custody Statistics, England and Wales: Deaths in Prison Custody to December 2020 Assaults and Self-harm to September 2020. The report is generally grim, and especially so for women.” February 2022: “Once upon a time, the word custody meant protection, safekeeping, responsibility for protecting or taking care of. No longer. If one is to take the sorry and sordid output and history of the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice, custody today means the power to cage and code for cruelty. It’s that time of the year again when the Ministry releases its in no way long awaited “safety in custody” reports, and, yet again, one can only look at the numbers and wonder. If this is safety in custody, what would danger look like?” Well, here we are, September 2023, and the United Kingdom Ministry of Justice has release yet another `grim’ Safety in Custody Statistics, England and Wales: Deaths in Prison Custody to June 2023 Assaults and Self-harm to March 2023, and this one is actually worse than its predecessors, and, like its predecessors, will go largely unread, undiscussed, and without response, in word or deed. So … here it is, and here we are.

“There were 59,722 self-harm incidents in the 12 months to March 2023, up 11% from the previous 12 months, comprising of a 1% decrease in male establishments and a 52% increase in female establishments. Over the same period, the rate of self-harm incidents per 1,000 prisoners, which takes account of the increase in the prison population between this and the previous year, decreased 5% in male establishments but increased 51% in female establishments.”

Here are the Statistician’s comment: “In female establishments, both self-harm and assault incidents increased, by 52% and 16% respectively, with self-harm incidents reaching their highest level in the time series …. The rate in female establishments has increased considerably by 51% to a new peak (5,826 per 1,000 prisoners), whereas it has decreased 5% in male establishments (523 per 1,000 prisoners), meaning the rate is now more than eleven times higher in female establishments. This was driven by a substantial increase in the average number of incidents among those who self-harmed in female establishments, from 11.1 to 17.0, a much larger increase than previously despite this continuing an increasing trend seen for the last six years.”

The comments continue, more or less in the same vein, but you get the picture. The trend of self-harm among incarcerated women has been bad and getting worse for the past six years, but this year, the increase was much larger. Again, no one other than the usual suspects will pay any attention to this report. How do we know? Because the report was released end of July, and it’s already mid-September, and the response has been a resounding silence. Actually, more like a blurry noise, always there but not worth noticing or discussing.

The violence against women perpetrated by the State is increasing. The report notes that the assaults by women are less violent than those of men. What does that tell you? That the women are sending a message by carving into their own flesh, again and again and again, and all they get, in response, is another government report from a ministry that dares to use the name “Justice”. In circumstances like this, language only exists to demonstrate its own vacuity, our own capacity to empty words of any real significance: grim, custody, justice, harm, responsibility, care, prison, women. We study, we write, we organize … and the violence does more than continue, it escalates: “The number of incidents and rate of self-harm in the female estate are now at the highest level in the time series.” Who cares?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Infographic: UK Ministry of Justice)

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Hope in a time of choler: Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalizes abortion at the federal level

September 7, 2023 by Leave a Comment


In the same week that Mexico’s two major political parties nominated women to run for President, nearly assuring that Mexico’s next President will be a woman, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that abortion as a federal crime violates Mexico’s Constitution: “The legal system that penalises abortion in the Federal Criminal Code is unconstitutional since it violates the human rights of women and people with the ability to carry a fetus”. This decision builds on a 2021 decision that decriminalized abortion in the state of Coahuila, a state that ironically or tragically or both shares a border with the United States, specifically with Texas. As the Washington Post succinctly put it, “Mexican court expands access to abortion, even as U.S. restricts it.”

The Supreme Court case came as a result of a suit last year, filed by el Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida, GIRE, the Information Group for Reproductive Choice, challenging a 1931 Federal regulation. Since the 2021 decision, 12 Mexican states decriminalized abortion. This week’s ruling means that all Federal hospitals and clinics, irrespective of local laws and restrictions, must provide abortions. Women and people with the ability to carry a fetus can seek abortions without fearing prosecution. Health providers can respond to women and people with the ability to carry a fetus without fearing prosecution. The decriminalization of abortion means the end of a police state of ever impending terror and incarceration.

As both GIRE and the Supreme Court Justices freely admit, while this was a judicial decision, it emerged from years of organizing, from the Green Wave that has swept across Mexico and across the Americas, surging in Argentina, Colombia, and beyond. As Arturo Zaldivar, the former president of the Supreme Court, wrote: “The Green Wave continues to advance. All rights for all women and pregnant people!” A Green Wave continues to surge across Latin America, inspiring, invigorating, and instructing.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: GIRE)

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Johannesburg: “Just because they are already living on the margins of society does not make them invisible social outcasts or nuisances”

September 2, 2023 by Leave a Comment

On August 29, the Pretoria High Court declared that “the recent series of evictions undertaken by the City of Johannesburg (COJ) and the MMC for Human Settlements in Gauteng, on Farm Allandale, have been declared unlawful and unconstitutional.” Lawyers for Human Rights, the attorneys representing Farm Allendale residents, described this as “a pivotal court decision …. This ruling is not just a win for the residents of Farm Allandale but a clarion call to all entities, reminding them of the human touch essential in the dispensation of justice. This victory serves as a testament to the resilience of communities and the critical role that organizations like LHR play in ensuring that justice is meted out fairly.” A community of 836 people, identified as Rabie Ridge Community, have lived for years on land known as Farm Allendale. The City of Johannesburg has evicted them, destroying their homes as well as their belongings, numerous times. The residents sued the City … and won. Acting Judge Elmien Du Plessis said, “These people have human rights as contained in the Bill of Rights and protected in the Constitution. Just because they are already living on the margins of society does not make them invisible social outcasts or nuisances, however much their presence may frustrate the respondents – the City and the MMC.” The Judge declared the actions of the City unlawful and ruled the City had to either rebuild the shacks within 72 hours or pay each family R1500 to buy materials to rebuild their own homes. This was a landmark victory, a beacon in the very dark and too long night. Had I written in response on Wednesday, this would be a celebration. But then the fires broke out the next day, in the central business district of Johannesburg, the fires this time, the fires next time, and the whole world suddenly invoked the “tragedy waiting to happen”. And so today, the question is not “What is there to celebrate”, although that is a good question, but rather “What is there to say? What is the point of saying anything, when everything has already been said, and so many times before?”

In June 2017, we wrote, “Last Thursday, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that judges cannot authorize an eviction order that will leave people homeless. Over the past 25 years, South Africa’s highest courts have ruled consistently that the rights of residents, including occupiers, matter. Even with those protections in place, this decision is viewed as groundbreaking and welcome. The case involves 184 people – 47 women, 114 men, 23 children – who have occupied an apartment building in the Berea neighborhood of Johannesburg’s inner city. Hlengiwe Mhlambo is one of the 184. She is forty years old, a mother of two, and an informal trader. For the past 14 years, Hlengiwe Mhlambo has lived in her apartment, eking out a meager living, raising her children, hoping to find, or better create, the once promised green pasture.” This was a “momentous decision for millions of poor people across South Africa who live with insecure tenure and inadequate housing”. Remember? That was “only” six years ago.

In October 2022, just last year, the Johannesburg High Court rejected the `natural’ inevitability of eviction. As we wrote then, “In the case of Rycloff-Beleggings (Pty) Ltd v Ntombekhaya Bonkolo and Others, the Johannesburg High Court ruled that a group of working people’s access to work and right to dignity had to be considered when adjudicating an eviction notice. The case involves waste reclaimers who have been living on an `undeveloped’ stretch of farmland that lies between a residential complex and a business park in the Midrand section of Johannesburg. In 2018, the owners of the land, Rycloff-Beleggings, decided they wanted to `develop’ the land, and so issued eviction notices. The city offered a site with no possibility of developing waste reclamation economies, and so, in May 2019, the residents sued, demanding to either stay put or be placed somewhere where they could continue to work. On October 4, Judge Greg Wright agreed and gave the city until March 2023 to find appropriate site for the community. Anything else `would leave them at risk of not being able to maintain their dignity and care for their children.  It would be unfair and therefore unconstitutional to uphold the other parties’ rights while the reclaimers go hungry. Furthermore, the rights of children are paramount in cases involving children such as the present one.’ If people are on the land, it is not `undeveloped’. If people live in a neighborhood, it too is not undeveloped.” Remember? It was less than a year ago … and yet here we are.

The people living on Farm Allendale first moved in in 2017, but most moved in last year and this, having lost their jobs during the Covid pandemic. Many families had previously rented but could no longer pay the bills. Others had squatted elsewhere but could no longer afford to stay in those areas. And so they moved, adults and many children, to Farm Allendale. The City declared that too many people were moving in and so they started evicting everyone, although the City claimed they only destroyed `abandoned’ shacks. The residents had photos and videos showing that not to be the case. While the incidents that sparked the court case occurred mid July of this year, the City has performed mass evictions every three weeks for the past three years. For three years, the City of Johannesburg engaged in illegal evictions, and you want to know how the fires this week started and spread, how so many people could end up living in a five-story building? Everybody knew already.

If people are on land, the land is not `undeveloped’. If people live in a neighborhood, it is not `undeveloped’. And if people live in a building, whether it is called derelict or hijacked or blighted or whatever, it is not vacant nor is it `undeveloped’. It’s home. Living on the margins of society does not make people invisible social outcasts or nuisances, however much their presence may frustrate others or `development’ programs. At the same time, writing insightfully always already after the event, after the tragedy waiting to happen, is not insight. It’s alibi. No next time. Now. Mutual respect is already encoded in law as well as ethical behavior. Now make it so.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Philiswa Lila – Entsizwa II / Art Times)

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Eviction must mean more than the sum total of legal processes

August 25, 2023 by Leave a Comment

“The mainstream has never run clean, perhaps never can. Part of mainstream education involves learning to ignore this absolutely, with a sanctioned ignorance.”
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason

 Across the United States and around the world, evictions are rising and residential rentals and home sales prices are skyrocketing. Predictably, this is accompanied by rising rates of eviction. While parts of the United Kingdom are experiencing rates of eviction they haven’t faced in almost twenty years, the United States is facing mortgage rates it also  hasn’t faced in over twenty years. But what exactly is an eviction, other than an existential crisis, a crisis that in the United States targets Black and Brown women? In the official discourse on housing, eviction has meant “the action or an instance of expelling a person by legal process from land, property, etc., occupied by him or her.” The key here, and the element of sanctioned ignorance, is “by legal process”. If eviction is only an action based on a legal process, what then do we call all those actions in which people are forced to move, but without any legal process involved?

Consider these stories from the last couple days.

In Sausalito, California, the owners of an apartment complex occupied mostly by elderly residents recently issued eviction notices to all the residents. The all-too-familiar story is a new owner came in a year or so ago, began letting maintenance go, never answered calls for repairs and then, again this week, decided the buildings needs “remodeling”. And so … people on fixed incomes in a hot rental market are out on the streets.

In Bakersfield, California, rents are going up as much as 40%, often in violation of the law. When Bakersfield Tenants Union Founder Wendell “J.R.” Wesley Jr. was issued a $100 rent increase, he knew that was illegal, and so went to the Leadership Counsel, a local advocacy group, got some help, and stopped the rent increase as well as the threat of eviction.

In Tucson, Oklahoma, a recent survey of unhoused people showed that the population of homeless elders is rising precipitously, and that the two leading causes of homelessness are eviction and skyrocketing rents.

These are just three stories from the last couple days, taken from a much longer list. They are stories of eviction, and familiar ones at that, but they hide as much as they show. What about all the elders living in apartments where the writing is on the wall, sometimes in the form of unattended mildew and mold? What about the elders who are harassed, directly or through `passive’ nonresponse and inaction, into `informal eviction’ or, even more ineptly, `self eviction’? Likewise, J.R. Wesley is an organizer who knows more than a thing or two about local and state housing laws. What about all those people who received a $100 increase in their rent, didn’t know it was illegal, didn’t know there are organizations and resources to help them, and moved before they lost everything and incurred today’s version of a Scarlet Letter, ie an eviction filing? Finally, it’s not only evictions leading to homelessness. It’s also rents rising so fast and so much they become unaffordable. People who have lived for years in an area that was affordable, if barely, are now forced to move through no action or fault of their own. What about them?

In Wisconsin, the Supreme Court will hear an argument to reduce the time eviction records are kept from 20 years to one year. In Wisconsin, the 20 years on file is for eviction filings, not evictions, and so the landlord has an extraordinarily menacing tool: “The vast majority of renters in eviction court are not evicted. According to the petition, there were 17,727 eviction filings in Wisconsin in just 2021. Just under ten percent of those eviction filings actually resulted in an eviction”. What about all those people who understand that an eviction filing is as damning as an actual eviction and decide to move?

That more attention is being given to eviction is good, but we need more and better attention. At this stage, there is still no national eviction data base. Last month, Virginia began collecting data on the number and locations of evictions that occur in any given year. That’s a good step. Across the country, many groups follow the model of Princeton’s Eviction Lab and collect data on eviction filings, also an important step in the right direction. But, again, those who are formally filed against, and even more those who go through the tragedy and existential crisis of eviction, are a minority of those who have been forcibly displaced. And we know, from history as well as from contemporary experience, that forcible displacement, while it may be experienced in deeply individual ways, is never a solitary event. Forced displacement is always already mass displacement. We cannot, in our research, advocacy, and organizing, create yet another mainstream moment, in which millions of people and communities are relegating to the status of ghosts, present and yet somehow not sufficiently enough to matter.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo: Iziko Slave Lodge)

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In South Africa, `return to normal’ drowns domestic workers in debt, danger, despair

August 1, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Have you heard, the pandemic is over, and the world is `returning to normal’. In South Africa, part of this return has involved loadshedding, scheduled (or not) rolling blackouts. Why does a country as rich as South Africa suffer from loadshedding? Don’t ask. This Sunday, SweepSouth, a South African online platform through which people can hire domestic workers and domestic workers can secure reasonably protected work arrangements, released the 2023 Report on Domestic Workers Pay and Work Conditions, its sixth since 2018. The news this year is grim. As Luke Kannemeyer, SweepSouth Managing Director, noted in the Executive Summary, “Our results continue to emphasise the disproportionate burden that domestic workers carry in their households. The majority are women (94%), sole breadwinners (84%), single caregivers (64%), and support an average of four dependents …. Workers continue to sacrifice basic needs as costs outstrip earnings. Food is the largest expenditure item with the greatest increase since last year (+12%). Poor South Africans were hit hardest as food inflation hit a 14-year high in March 2023. Primarily driven by the electricity crisis, vegetables, wheat and corn-based products, and plant-based oils (such as vegetable oil) increased the most. These items make up a disproportionate portion of food in low-income households. With few workers having any savings (2023: 9%, 2022: 10%), many take on debt.” While much of the report is unsurprising, much of it is new, and none of it encouraging. As Kannemeyer concludes the Executive Summary, “This summary is just the tip of the iceberg. We want this report to motivate you to be part of driving change in the domestic work industry.”

As in past years, 94% of domestic workers are women, median age 37. 39% are South African, 56% are Zimbabwean. 58% work in Gauteng, 37% in the Western Cape. 96% are primarily engaged in cleaning. 28% of domestic workers lost their jobs in the past year. Of this group, 25% lost their jobs because their employers could no longer afford them. This is more or less consistent with past years. 40% lost their jobs because their employers moved. Of those employers who moved, 28% moved to another city in South Africa, and 59% moved overseas. Much of the movement from one city to another, semigration, is a consequence of remote working. In both instances, emigration and semigration, those leaving are so-called skilled workers.

Between loss of jobs, relatively stagnant earnings, skyrocketing inflation, it’s not particularly surprising that most domestic workers are in debt and sinking deeper quickly and that very few have any savings.

Loadshedding has also taken its toll. Most domestic workers report that loadshedding has had a negative impact on the number of hours they work, has added extra time on their commutes, and made their commutes more dangerous. Additionally, loadshedding has had the more general impact lack of reliable energy has on low-income communities.

The report ends with recommendations: enforce and expand legal protections; implement multi-pronged solutions for loadshedding; improve access to mental health; increase support for workers facing abuse at home and in their workplace. While these are all reasonable recommendations, they miss the core new element in this year’s report and the core element in every report. The core element in every report is that almost all the domestic workers are women. This is a women’s employment, security, and rights issue. While that may be obvious, it needs to be emphasized and acted upon. Thousands of women are being sent into a situation of structural violence because they are women. The new element is that those who lost their jobs lost their jobs because their employers either emigrated or semigrated. This is new, and the State as well as organized labor must address this situation. What sorts of arrangements must be made before an employer leaves? What sorts of obligations does the employer have? What obligation does the State have? What obligations do the trade unions have? What obligations do the women’s movements have? If nothing is done, the result will be more than thousands of unemployed women, which is bad enough. It will be thousands of women heads of household drowning in rising debt, which will condemn them, their families, their communities to a future without promise or hope. That is unacceptable.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Infographic Credit: SweepSouth)

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Hope in a time of choler: Ghana abolishes the death penalty

July 29, 2023 by Leave a Comment

 

It’s been thirty years or so since Ghana executed anyone. Until this week, that was the good news. This week, in a “landmark vote”, Ghana’s Parliament voted to end the death penalty in all cases but high treason. To change that last hurdle, the Parliament will have to amend the Constitution. Nevertheless, this is a major step. There are currently 178 people on death row, six of whom are women. Most were sentenced to death because the law mandated the death sentence for certain offenses. Judges had no choice. As of this week, all of that changes. According to Amnesty International’s West and Central Africa Director Samira Daoud, “Today’s parliamentary vote is a major step by Ghana towards the abolition of the death penalty. It is also a victory for all those who have tirelessly campaigned to consign this cruel punishment to history and strengthen the protection of the right to life. Although a landmark decision, the total abolition of this draconian punishment would not be complete without revising the Constitution, which still provides for high treason to be punishable by death.”

Over the last ten years, the abolition of capital punishment has swept across sub-Saharan Africa. Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Madagascar, Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Zambia abolished the death penalty. In the past five years, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea and Zambia banned the death penalty. Twenty-nine African countries have abolished the death sentence. Since Ghana had not executed anyone for over ten years, the United Nations labelled it a de facto death penalty abolitionist, but Ghanaian politicians, and a majority of Ghanaians in every poll, thought that while that was fine, it wasn’t and isn’t enough.

Six of those on death row are women. Amnesty International Ghana and allies have argued, for years, that [a] the death penalty in and of itself had to be abolished and [b] that the death penalty had particularly catastrophic consequences for women, both for women on death row whose physical surroundings amounted to torture and for women partners of men on death row, who suffered severe deprivation. This week, Ghana’s Parliament heard their call.

Francis-Xavier Kojo Sosu, the Ghanian MP who tabled the bill, said, “On death row, prisoners woke up thinking this could be their last day on earth. They were like the living dead: psychologically, they had ceased to be humans. Abolishing the death penalty shows that we are determined as a society not to be inhumane, uncivil, closed, retrogressive and dark. It opens the way to further realization of a free, open, progressive, inclusive and secure society instead, and reflects our common belief that the sanctity of life is inviolable.” Imagine our common belief that the sanctity of life is inviolable. This week, Ghana has.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Amnesty International)

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Your money is no good here: On Section 8 housing vouchers

July 21, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Again and again, we hear that the housing crisis in the United States is a result of not enough affordable housing, largely a result of the cessation of housing construction following the 2008 housing market crash and subsequent economic recession. And that is true. We also hear that rising prices, inflation, and stagnant wages are a cause. Also true. We also hear that skyrocketing rents contribute to the crisis. True as well. We also hear that the rental market is being taken over by corporate landlords and hedge funds, and that’s driving rates of eviction up. Right again. But wait, there’s more. Consider the story of Heather Nelson, mother of two, resident of Maine, holder of a Section 8 housing voucher.

In 1937, the U.S. Congress passed the aptly titled United States Housing Act of 1937. Section 8 reads: “For the purpose of aiding lower-income families in obtaining a decent place to live and of promoting economically mixed housing, assistance payments may be made with respect to existing housing in accordance with the provisions of this section.” From the beginning, this nobly worded policy suffered from reliance on local governments and politics. Local governments were given free rein to decide how and where the federal funding would be spent. What could possibly go wrong … often did. Nevertheless, the basic Section 8 voucher that emerged from this legislation and numerous subsequent amendments continues to this day.

Heather Nelson lives in Sanford, Maine. Sanford is a town, self-incorporated, of close to 22,000 people. Heather Nelson is mother to two children with autism spectrum disorder. One of her children was recently hospitalized due to a newly diagnosed autoimmune disorder. Heather Nelson herself lives with disabilities and can’t work. Her landlord recently told her she has to vacate the premises, by June 1. At this point, she has not done so, because there’s nowhere to go. As Heather Benson explains, “If I contact the people, they don’t want to take housing vouchers”. And there it is.

At present, 17 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws that prohibit discrimination against Section 8 voucher holders. Many cities have passed similar legislation. Currently, 2.2 million households rely on Section 8 vouchers. Maine is among the 33 states that has not prohibited discrimination against Section 8 holders. Sanford, Maine, is among the municipalities that have not passed legislation protecting in any way Section 8 holders. But this really isn’t about Maine or Sanford. It’s about the situation nationally.

Across the country, in the midst of rising homelessness and, even more, anxiety and despair, landlords are rejecting applicants who are Section 8 holders, just because they’re Section 8 holders. Their money, assured by the Federal government, is not as good as the money of others. Why? Because it’s money that suggests assistance. The money is secure, actually more secure than that of many relying on their jobs, but that doesn’t matter. If you needed help, for whatever reason, your money is no good here. And so we have a nation of Nowhere To Go, in which those living with disabilities are thrown into the gutter. More laws are needed. More enforcement of those laws is needed as well. More concern about collective responsibility is equally important. Who says to someone who has reliable income, “Your money is no good here?” We all do.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of American History)

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A day or two in the life (and death) of an incarcerating world

July 7, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Estimated tuberculosis incidence in prisons (cases per 100 000 person-years) by country in 2019

We’ve passed the hottest day in recorded history. How’s it going, otherwise? Let’s consider the world of prisons, jails, and other forms of locking people up and away. Here’s how we’ve been, at least how we’ve been recorded over the last couple days. Yesterday, the European Court of Human Rights condemned France for its cruel and usually overcrowded and otherwise degrading prisons. Also this week, France’s Inspector General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty condemned the prison in Perpignan for “undignified conditions”. Ireland has the highest number of prisoners and the greatest levels of overcrowding in its history. Women in the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility are suffering state torture and dying at alarming rates. A teenage Aboriginal girl held in Kurlana Tapa Youth Justice Center tried to kill herself. Authorities refused to notify anyone. Why would they? It’s just another Aboriginal prison statistic. And finally, globally, nearly half of all TB cases in prisons and jails go undetected. Incarcerated people are dying. This is a skim of the past four days.

In 2020, 32 incarcerated people from six prisons sued France for inhumane conditions, especially for intense overcrowding. At the center of this was the Fresnes Prison, the second largest prison in France and one of three prisons `serving’ the Paris region. At the time, France’s prisons were at around 116% capacity. Fresnes Prison was at close to 200% capacity. The European Court of Human Rights convicted and fined France for violating inmates’ rights, specifically “the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment and … the right to an effective remedy”. Fresnes Prison had already been convicted for similar offenses two years earlier. Yesterday, the same European Court of Human Rights again convicted and fined France, again for violation of rights in Fresnes Prison. This time, along with the general conditions, especially the overcrowding, the plaintiffs also protested full body searches. Today, France’s prisons are at 120% capacity. Given the mass arrests of those protesting police violence, that situation is expected to worsen. Meanwhile, the Inspector General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty published her findings concerning the conditions at the Perpignan Prison, in Pyrénées-Orientales Department in southern France. The report begins by noting that a place designed for no more than 132 persons currently houses 315, or 239% capacity. From there the report went downhill: “endemic overcrowding, toxic material accommodation conditions, unsanitary conditions, proliferation of pests, systematic searches, disproportionate use of force and means of restraint”. This is not the first time that the prison in Perpignan has been cited. Plus ça change …

Speaking of the eternal return of the same, the Irish prisons are overcrowded at a historic level. The most overcrowded is the Dóchas Centre, which is at almost 120% of capacity. The Irish government is reported to be “scrambling” now in response, despite this being a longstanding issue. Rather than build more mental health facilities and more support services, the response has been to build more prisons.

Yesterday, a one-on-one companion observer for incarcerated women at the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility (WNMCF) published her observations of the lethal conditions in the institution, where last three years three of her patients died of suicide and many others attempted suicide: “not only did the prison staff fail to save these women’s lives, but the abuse, neglect, disregard, and maliciousness of prison staff pushed them to the point of desperation that made them feel death was the only option.” They didn’t fail, they refused. In 2022, New Mexico paid over $860,000 to settle allegations of rape and sexual abuse at its women’s prisons. Again, staff “failed” to respond to appropriately, “looking the other way”. They didn’t fail; they refused. There’s a humanitarian crisis at Western New Mexico Correctional Facility … and beyond.

There’s a humanitarian crisis at the Kurlana Tapa Youth Justice Centre as well. The Kurlana Tapa Youth Justice Centre is the only juvenile detention center in South Australia. This week, it was reported that an Aboriginal teenage girl tried to commit suicide in early 2023, and the detention center didn’t inform anyone for months. Actually, they never did actually report the incident. They didn’t see the need. The girl, a sexual abuse survivor, was arrested on some minor offences. Bail was recommended, but because of mental health issues, she was remanded for assessment. When she tried to commit suicide, the staff intervened and took her to the hospital. Then, they reported that they took her to the hospital as a precaution. It was only two months later, when her attorney read court-ordered hospital psychiatric reports, only then did she find out that her client had tried to kill herself. The prison staff never informed her of that. They didn’t fail, they refused. Lately, children at Kurlana Tapa have been locked in their cells 23 hours a day, and incidents of self-harm have skyrocketed. Australia finds this “shocking”.

Finally, a study came out, reported on this week, that studied the global situation of tuberculosis in prisons and jails in 2019, that is prior to Covid. The study found the following: “The high incidence rate globally and across regions, low case-detection rates, and consistency over time indicate that this population represents an important, underprioritised group for tuberculosis control. Continued failure to detect, treat, and prevent tuberculosis in prisons will result in unnecessary disease and deaths of many incarcerated individuals.” Nearly half of TB cases among incarcerated people go undetected. Again, not failure, refusal.

From France to Ireland to the United States to Australia to entire world, prisons and jails are dangerous and often lethal. If we know, as we now do, that prisons and jails, especially but not only overcrowded institutions, breed tuberculosis which goes `undetected’ if we know, as we now do, that sending people to those places results in `unnecessary disease and deaths’, and we won’t discuss the concept of necessity here, how can we continue to send people, women, children, anyone, to those places? Just another day or two in the life (and death) of an incarcerating world.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Infographic Credit: The Lancet Public Health)

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