European Parliament Approves Resolution on Female Genital Mutilation
	Family Planning Association Brings "Frauen der Welt" Exhibition to Austrian Parliament
	UNFPA Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid Hears Face to Face Goodwill Ambassador Testimonies
	Goodwill Ambassador Catarina Furtado on Mozambique
	Goodwill Ambassador Alfred Biolek on the Role of Media
	Goodwill Ambassador Goedele Liekens Gives HIV/AIDS a Human Face
	Goodwill Ambassador Hanne-Vibeke Holst on the Women of Vietnam
	Goodwill Ambassador Elsa Zylberstein on Fundraising for Population Assistance

By Cristiana Scoppa
AIDOS

On September 20, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning Female Genital Mutilation as a violation of fundamental human rights. The resolution was presented by EU MP Elena Valenciano Martinez-Orozco and received strong support from Italian Parliamentarian Emma Bonino, former EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid.

The resolution issues a sweeping condemnation, including the opposition of FGM as a medical procedure and a call for legislation and funding of programs to raise awareness and eradicate the practice worldwide. It also expresses a hope that member states will recognize the rights of women at risk to seek asylum.

In understanding of the need for sensitivity, particularly among immigrant communities, the resolution calls for the involvement of those countries in which FGM is practiced. It also emphasizes that while, in those countries, long-term change must be initiated and supported from within, international support in the form of developmental assistance is critical, and calls for aid to those countries which have adopted legislation and administrative procedures banning FGM.

End.

A note about AIDOS.

In September 1999, Face to Face Campaign Partner AIDOS launched a comprehensive awareness campaign on FGM designed to reach all levels of Italian society.

AIDOS has been working on the issue of FGM in various African countries since 1985. The organization launched the FGM campaign with a print advertisement and TV spot featuring F2F Campaign Spokesperson Waris Dirie. The ad ran in 22 daily newspapers and 15 magazines; the TV spot was shown several times on 12 TV channels and in 141 cinemas throughout Italy. The Italian media quickly picked up on the "hot" issue -- magazines, newspapers, journals, TV shows, and radio programs began regular coverage of the issue.

AIDOS' FGM advocacy work became integrated with the organization’s information campaign toward immigrants, financed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the year 2000, AIDOS published: an annotated bibliography on FGM; a position paper on legislation of FGM; an information booklet in Somali and Italian; research on Somali and Nigerian immigrants in Italy; a guidebook for social workers and medical personnel; and an informative poster. Several meetings were held with communities of immigrants, personnel of NGOs working with the immigrants, and staff of the public health counseling centers.

The AIDOS FGM campaign has achieved great results. Most notably, a resolution was approved by Parliament, engaging the government to: a) conduct a survey on FGM in Italy; b) promote information and prevention campaigns within immigrant communities; c) guarantee psychological and legal assistance to girls and women who have been or could be mutilated; d) financially support the initiatives of NGOs that work for the eradication of FGM in Africa and in Europe. Also, an Interministerial Commission on FGM has been created with the purposes of creating a place of action for the prevention of FGM in Italy.

During an international conference organized by AIDOS with the European Parliamentarian Emma Bonino, on the 6th of March, 2001 in the Houses of Parliament, AIDOS asked the Italian Government to sign a trust fund with the United Nations Population Fund for financing projects against FGM in African countries. The Prime Minister, Hon. Giuliano Amato, who gave a speech at the conference, has accepted the proposal and the process has started. Meanwhile, the Ministry for Equal Opportunities has allocated 1.5 billion lire for financing the activities in Italy.

For more information, contact AIDOS by e-mail: aidos_italy@compuserve.com or Tel: +39 06 687 3214.

As part of its ongoing effort to raise governmental awareness of women’s issues worldwide, Austrian Face to Face partner, OEGF , the Austrian Family Planning Association, presented “Women of the World: Face to Face” to the Austrian Parliament. For a week in September 2001, the exhibition, a collection of photographs depicting the sorts of social and political issues facing women today, attracted NGOs and members of Parliament from across party lines.

OEGF board member, Marianne Springer-Kremser, toured the exhibition with the President of the Parliament, pointing out particularly powerful images, such as “Marya,” a pregnant homeless child, and “Young Women Examining AIDS Literature.”

This exhibit is the result of a successful collaboration between two Face to Face Campaign partners. Originally conceived and exhibited by FPFE, the Spanish Family Planning Assocation, the exhibition was translated and adapted for the Austrian audience by OEGF with a grant from Face to Face. In Austria, the exhibition was also open to the general public and was well-attended, thanks to publicity from print and television partners. In response to various NGO requests, OEGF is looking into the possibility of presenting the exhibition in additional Austrian cities.

Photos from the original FPFE exhibition are featured on the left-hand side of many of the pages of the Face to Face Web site.

Paris, October 24, 2001. The third meeting of Western European UNFPA Goodwill Ambassadors and Face to Face Campaign Spokespersons opened the three-day meeting of European non-governmental organizations (EuroNGOs) concerned with population assitance.

Many of EuroNGO members are partners in the Face to Face Campaign. As such, they and the UNFPA Goodwill Ambassadors were briefed on the latest people, programs and progress of the Face to Face Campaign by Walter Coddington, Executive Director of Face to Face International. The most significant part of the meeting was the series of personal testimonies given by 5 Goodwill Ambassadors about their Face to Face Campaign activity.

Recently appointed UNFPA Executive Director, Mrs. Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, heard their testimonies and, in an impassioned closing event speech, recognized the importance of celebrity advocacy and remembered the millions of women whose lives are still at risk for lack of basic rights and services that many of us take for granted.

Each one of the testimonies follows.

In Portuguese-speaking Mozambique, Catarina Furtado, Face to Face Campaign Spokesperson and UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador from Portugal, found more than a nation that spoke her language. She found moving stories of economic and social distress that put personal faces on Africa's social and health crises that she'd only read about secondhand. "Looking at reports and statistics is one thing," she testified, "and watching face to face is quite another."
Accompanied on her visit by members of APF , the Portuguese Family Planning Association, Ms. Furtado witnessed the devastation that AIDS is causing in Mozambique. She found young people more willing to address the problem honestly than adults. The young seemed to possess a greater "will and responsibility to change the mentality of the country," she said.
When she donated three computers to a youth counseling center, the young volunteers "were so happy," she said, "that some of them cried and promised me that one day I would be very proud of them. I am proud already because of their optimism and hope."
Later, during a hospital visit, Ms. Furtado noticed that surgical gloves were being washed, laid out to dry in the sun, and then reused. She was also saddened to see three or four sick children in each bed. A nurse pleaded, "Please send milk from Portugal to our children."
After returning home to Lisbon, Ms. Furtado learned that Portugal would donate a car to one of the hospitals for outpatient assistance. In addition, she received a letter from one of the non-governmental organizations in Mozambique thanking her for giving them the courage and self-confidence to continue to fight. For her personally, the visit was a wonderful experience, and she was excited "to pass the message from the young people and the women from Mozambique to the ones who have the power."

At the meeting in Paris, Dr. Alfred Biolek shared his work for the Face to Face Campaign and German partner Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevolkerung since becoming a UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador. Most notably, Dr. Biolek has appeared on several talk shows in Germany to speak about his travels to Africa and the issues that affect developing countries. On television, he advocates for the needs of young women in these countries and emphasizes the importance of fundraising to improve access to family planning in the developing world.

Photo: Dr. Biolek in Soweto, South Africa.

As reported in an earlier edition of “Latest News,” TV presenter and Face to Face Campaign Spokesperson Goedele Liekens participated in the third “United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries” that took place in Brussels. UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador Liekens gave testimomy at the “Symposium on consequences of HIV/AIDS on the development of LDCs, notably in Sub Saharan Africa.” The symposium was organised by the State Secretary of Development Cooperation (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) of Belgium, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Inter-European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development (IEPFPD), the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the Face to Face Campaign and CGSO Trefpunt , the Belgian Face to Face Campaign partner.

Ms. Liekens met a number of remarkable people during her visit with a group of Flemish youngsters to Otse, a small village in Botswana. But one woman, she testified, stood out from all the others. Her name was Staphie. She was 28 years old, and she and her two beautiful young children, Veronica, 3, and Charity, 8, were HIV-infected.
Ms. Liekens and her young companions were so touched by the terrible situation faced by Staphie and the people of her village that they went searching for a way--any way--to help these people. Sadly, three weeks after they returned to Belgium, Staphie died of AIDS, leaving her two children orphans, part of the 55,000 AIDS orphans in Botswana.

At the Paris Face to Face Campaign briefing, Ambassador Liekens presented the heartbreaking TV documentary she produced about the life and death of Staphie.
Now, Ms. Liekens and her teen companions (participants in a unique AIDS-awareness program developed by Ms. Liekens) are lecturing, writing, and making national and international TV appearances to raise public consciousness of the AIDS crisis in Botswana. They are also raising money to found a small local orphanage in Otse, to be called the "Mmago Merel" orphanage (Ms. Liekens Tswana name).

Danish bestselling author Hanne-Vibeke Holst, Face to Face Spokesperson and UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador, is undertaking a Face to Face book project that will present the concerns of women in the South to readers in the North in a fresh and appealing manner. She wants to move her readers to get involved and advocate for a better quality of life for millions of developing world women, one woman at a time.

At the Paris Face to Face Campaign briefing, Ms. Holst introduced an excerpt from her book project. The excerpt, entitled “From Harvesting to Hawking: A Country Girl in Hanoi,” focused on a 22-year old street hawker whom Ms. Holst interviewed in a café in Hanoi.

The full except, “Harvesting to Hawking: A Country Girl in Hanoi,” follows:

It’s noon in Hanoi. The temperature has reached its summit so far, 35 degrees C / 95 degrees F. Humidity is high, as in a greenhouse, clothes are clinging to clammy skin. Anyone who possibly can escapes from the streets in search of shade, air-conditioned coolness, electric table fans.
But not Lan. Like thousands of other hawkers she continues her interminable day walk, carrying her yoke on her shoulders, balancing the two baskets of fruit and vegetables that she needs to sell before evening. Stopping only to do business, she squats down, lowering the yoke and its baskets to let the customer choose a couple of chilies, a mango, a bunch of coriander.
To the tourist she is a picturesque addition to the Vietnamese street scene with her peaked straw hat and pajama-like garb, a popular picture postcard motive. Even to the Government, she is a symbol that the Vietnamese version of controlled market economy, doi moi, is effective. Look, room has been made for private enterprise, we have small business, creating opportunities for the women not least. Because it is women who are street vendors. Great, isn’t it? That with a minimum investment the women can establish their own businesses, and so make themselves independent and strong, working their way up from the bottom, and maybe some day become the owners of business empires, chain stores, hotels, whatever. An alluring myth – recently deflated in a survey conducted by an independent research center. On the contrary, the survey shows that, whether shouldering her yoke in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City or Hué, the Vietnamese street vendor has no such golden future beckoning to her. Rather she is impoverished, outworn and humiliated, and the majority of the women find themselves in a position where they are unable to earn enough money to get even a small permanent stall in the market place. In fact, the hawkers are the lowest caste, ranging only just above the prostitutes. No one offers her any protection, not even the police. Or the law.
But Lan didn’t know any of those things when she came to Hanoi four or five months ago as a 22 year-old naïve girl from the country, just as the fairytale goes, to seek her fortune in the big city. That was where the gold was, not back in the province where the small plot of land was not enough to feed a family with five children. As the second child Lan was simply flipped from the nest, forced to rely on her own wings to carry her. And in Hanoi, so relatives told her, she could earn enough money o save from and even send some home – Lan herself eventually to follow. Because the city is only an interlude, Lan having left her heart behind, back home in the Ha Tinh Province, close to the sea where the family grows rice, sweet potatoes and peanuts. Back home in the village, 300 kilometers away from here, that’s where her boyfriend is from too; that is if he is actually still her fiancé. He went to Ho Chi Minh City, is believed to work in some kind of cafeteria there, but having lost touch with him, she doesn’t know for sure. And now Lan is anxious that he may have forgotten her, that he has begun to eye other girls. Chic city girls, like the ones roaring past her on fancy Honda Dream motor bikes, while she trudges along with her baskets, one street after another, feeling the pull of their weight all the way down into her legs.
Lan is the third hawker that we have tried to contact. The first two hurry off when approached by the interpreter. Why Lan, who otherwise seems just as timid as the others, should agree to join us at a small café and talk to us, is uncertain. Maybe she is just used to obeying. Maybe she is curious. Maybe it is, after all, a break in the monotonous routine to sit on little blue plastic chairs sipping sugar cane juice and speaking to a Western journalist. A small luxury that otherwise she couldn’t allow herself. Because things didn’t turn out the way she had expected. Life in the city is hard, both mentally and physically. From morning till night, seven days a week. Her voice is soft and frail like that of a small child, my questions cause her to squirm with embarrassment, she looks down at her hands before answering, and exactly like me, literally suffocating in the humid heat, she is sweating. The beads are on her nose, her upper lip, hair sticking to her temples. So yes, she thinks it is very hot to walk in this heat with her yoke. All day long. And it isn’t even really summer yet. I ask her to tell me about her life, her normal everyday routines, the 24 hours of her day. Her story comes out slowly, hesitantly, and meekly, as if she doesn’t want to admit to this life that was supposed to have been so very different, but one that is already setting into a mold that she cannot stand to acknowledge. And so, it is not something she likes to talk about. About the disappointment. About how it really is. About the mattress she rents in an upstairs room at the Dung Sung Market, for example. They are thirty woman hawkers sharing lodgings there. Which is practical enough as it is, because the market is where she buys the goods to be sold during the day. Early in the morning.
-I get up at five. Every morning, I’m afraid that I will oversleep and be late. As soon as I’m up, I hurry to the market to buy my supplies. Mangoes, oranges, plums. It depends on the season, but I try to have more or less the same things. The buying itself takes a couple of hours, and I don’t eat breakfast until I’m done. Sticky Rice at 1,000 Dong. After that I set out. I don’t have any regular routes, I just choose the busiest streets. Sometimes, when it’s hot like today, there’s not much demand, and I can walk for a long time without selling anything. I cannot sit down, that’s forbidden. If we are caught sitting on the sidewalk, we are either kicked away by the merchants who have stalls or shops there, or the police will come. Both are very unpleasant. Around twelve I have lunch, either I buy a dish of noodles from a street kitchen or have some rice at one of these little, cheap restaurants. After that I take a little rest in the shade, someplace where we are allowed to stay, under a tree or in the shade of a tall building. That’s where we meet, chat about this and that, about how sales are coming along, about our families back home, that sort of thing. I like that. We tease each other, laugh, have fun. Some days I may take a nap. But around two or half past two I have to get up and get going again. For the rest of the day I walk on until I have sold out. Most times I’m able get off work around eight or nine in the evening. Then I go back to our lodgings where we usually cook dinner together a few of us.
Sometimes, if I’m home early, I watch television for a while. But usually I go to bed as soon as we have eaten. No later than ten. I am so exhausted that I sleep right away. The last thing I think about are those back home. I ‘m always homesick before I go to sleep. Especially, I miss my mother. I pinch and scrape to be able to send money home. The landlady keeps it for me.
-What do you think about during the day?
-Oh, I think about my future. I worry about it. I would so like to go back home and live the rest of my life in the village. Here in the city I’m lonely, you have to struggle along on your own all the time, you have nothing but yourself. Nasty things also happen to us – people steal from us, we are beaten up – and to report it to the police only makes things worse. Either they beat us too, or we get fined, or they take both our baskets and our goods. It’s very tiring to be here, but I have to. Until maybe I can marry someone from back home, and we could get our own. That’s what I’m dreaming of. But if we couldn’t make enough from the land, I would have to go back to the city even then. Some of the women here have had to do that. Leave their husbands and children back in the province and go to the city themselves to halk the streets, and then only be able to get home a couple of times a year. That’s hard, but that’s what you may have to do. That’s the way it is.
-When are you most happy?
-Oh, when I get home and join my family, my parents and my brothers and sisters, and we sit around the dinner table again, all of us. Then I feel happy. I love the flowers and the birds and the sea. Back in school, we often used to go bathing. Sometimes we would go on a school excursion where they let us skip classes to swim and fool around instead, having fun. That’s the way it is even now when we meet back home, the old friends from back then. We go to the sea together. It’s wonderful.
-How do you experience the relationship between the two sexes?
-The boys are better off. They get treated better, sometimes they are even spoiled. They get what they want. As a girl, you may experience that as unjust, but on the other hand, maybe it’s okay. Because it’s the sons that will take care of their parents when they get old. So of course he must have the best conditions.
-How many children do you want?
-Only two. We couldn’t afford to have more.
-Have you had any information on contraception?
-Only from the mass media and such. I’ve never had any personal counseling myself.
-Do you know then how to avoid having more than two children?
-No, I don’t.
-What do you want most of all in the whole world? What if you won five million Dong? What would you do with it?
-I would give it to my parents. Then they could decide how to use the money. I have no dreams such as having a Honda Dream or a house or anything at all. Not at all. All I dream of is being allowed to go home and live a peaceful life. But if I must stay on here in the city, I’d like to have a small booth or a permanent stall. Or maybe a street kitchen. But I don’t know if I really dare. You have to be strong to have your own place. I’m not very smart. I left school early. My grades were bad, so it was no use.
-If you could make a wish from the Government, what would it be? If your conditions were to be improved?
-We, the hawkers, should be given some rights. So that the people attacking us or robbing us would be punished. The police shouldn’t be allowed to bother us either.
Lan’s voice fades almost to a whisper. She’s not used to talking about herself, that much is obvious. And now she would like to be let off the hook and get back on the streets again. She has to take care of business. At my request, the interpreter discreetly slips a not into her hand. 50,000 Dong or about 3.3 US Dollars. It’s almost the double of her average daily earnings of 30,000 Dong. She takes the money without blinking. Doesn’t even look at the note. Just slides it into the leather pouch she is wearing around her waist.
-What does “Lan” mean?
-Orchid.
Once more Lan smiles shyly. Gets up, enters the street and, with a few experienced grips, gets the yoke with its two baskets hoisted into position. Then she disappears into the throng of the city. The heat is still dizzying. The noise from mopeds and honking cars is infernal. It’s mid-afternoon. I throw myself into an air-conditioned car, waving as I pass her by. She still has five hours left on the street. And God knows how many years.

Elsa Zylberstein, Face to Face Campaign Spokesperson and UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador from France, described her field visit to Africa with Face to Face Campaign Partner Equilibres & Populations . She admitted that before going, her training as a spokesperson had seemed abstract, but that the realities “became more tangible” when she met the people of Senegal and Mali.

In Senegal, Ms. Zylberstein visited a health center. There, she met a man who asked her to help his village get access to unpolluted water. She described, “His request was so desperate, and his discourse so emphatic that he made me promise to personally advocate on his behalf.” She explained that many people she met “wanted someone to testify to their suffering and their needs.”

Ms. Zylberstein traveled from Senegal to Mali. She described a maternity ward she visited in one village: “It is a simple hut, with one bed, no light, no water, three tools – and darkness.” Later, she toured with a UNFPA worker, a man working daily to improve conditions for women. She was shocked when he told her that his wife was fourteen years old and had just given birth. When she asked how his wife felt about having the child, the man replied, smiling broadly, “I don’t care what she wants. I wanted to have one.”

Ms. Zylberstein returned to France with the conviction that money is now the key to making change. She concluded, “The people and the local NGOs I met, who are all doing a tremendous job, are in need of our financial assistance. As promised, I want to go back to Senegal and Mali, with some help.”