March 31, 2011
Volume Two, Issue Thirteen
Annual Letter Unveiled
Celebrating International Women's Month
Bits from the Blog
Guest Blog by Actress Lucy Liu: "Fight Human Trafficking by Nurturing Women and Girls"
Our Blog Series Highlighting International Women's Month
In the past several years I've met with girls and women who have survived brutal treatment as sex trafficking victims, and have been involved with several documentaries about their struggle to survive and give back.
Lucy Liu on field visit with UNICEF in 2008 to Cote d'Ivoire. Photo credit: U.S. Fund for UNICEF
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Meena Haseena was 9 when she was kidnapped from her home in Bihar, India, and taken to a brothel where she was beaten and raped for 12 years. When she ran away to get help from the police, they returned her to the brothel, asking only that she be spared beatings. (New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof chronicled her story in his book with Sheryl WuDunn, "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.")
This is human trafficking, a lucrative and growing transnational crime that brings in roughly $32 billion per year internationally.
Of those profits, $28 billion are made from commercial sexual exploitation, which characterizes 79 percent of identified trafficking cases. The victims are predominantly female.
As the United States Government takes this week to consider crime and violence perpetrated specifically against women, we must think of the circumstances that lead to girls and women like Meena being trafficked into captivity and viciously raped of their rights. In the brothel, Meena wasn't allowed condoms, and so she bore a daughter and son in captivity. They were taken away from her and raised as slaves. When Meena learned that she might be killed, she managed to escape, but it took her 14 years to rescue her first child, a daughter, from the brothel.
Read more.
DC Details
Our Experts- A Veteran Champion for Women
USAID's Deputy Administrator Don Steinberg. Photo Credit: USAID
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Donald Steinberg is the deputy administrator for USAID. He previously served as deputy president of the International Crisis Group. He is a former member of the U.N. Civil Society Advisory Group on Women, Peace and Security, a former board member of the Women's Refugee Commission, and previously served on the advisory panel to the executive director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women. He has written extensively on issues related to women in conflict and gender empowerment, and has been a strong advocate for gender issues throughout his career.
Steinberg recently sat down with FrontLines, USAID's bimonthly magazine, to discuss the role of gender in development.
FrontLines: The issue of women and girls is near and dear to your heart. Can you talk a little bit about your personal experiences that have led you to be such a champion of women's issues and women's empowerment?
Don Steinberg: It began with my very first assignment with the Foreign Service. I was 22 years old and was sent to the Central African Republic. One of my first tasks was to help put together a rural health project in the Ouham region....
Read the rest of the interview in FrontLines.
Partnering to Stop TB
On March 31, 2011, USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah joined U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health Dr. Howard Koh and Global Health Initiative Executive Director Lois Quam to kick off the Stop TB Partnership's Coordinating Board Meeting. The Coordinating Board, met for the first time in Washington, D.C. since 2001. The Board monitors the implementation of agreed policies, plans, and activities of the Stop TB Partnership. Hosted by the World Health Organization, the Stop TB Partnership consists of more than 1,600 international organizations, donors from the public and private sectors, endemic countries and civil society, all working together to eliminate TB.
Rifat Atun, Chair, Stop TB Partnership Coordinating Board, Dr. Shah (USAID Administrator), Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi (Minister of Health, South Africa), Dr. Mphu Ramatlapeng (Minister of Health & Social Welfare, Lesotho), Lois Quam (Executive Director, GHI), Dr. Howard Koh (U.S Assistant Secretary for Health), Benedict Xaba (Minister of Health, Swaziland), Lucica Ditiu (Executive Secretary, Stop TB Partnership) Photo Credit: Nicholas Gringold/NRG Photo
Dr. Shah addressed USAID's role as the U.S. global leader to combat TB control, and the Agency's efforts to support the Global Plan to Stop TB 2006 - 2015. The Global Plan is a comprehensive assessment of the action and resources needed to reach the UN Millennium Development Goal of halting and beginning to reverse the epidemic by 2015, and halving TB prevalence and death rates by 2015, compared with 1990 levels.
Read more about the Stop TB Partnership.
From the Field
USAID Supports Afghans Rolling Out Mobile Money
Currently in Afghanistan, only 4 percent of its citizens have a bank account and most regions don't have a bank branch. This makes it hard for citizens to run a business, save money or pay back loans for needed supplies like seeds.
In an effort to address this challenge, USAID announced a new Mobile Money Innovation Grant Fund, which was unveiled earlier this week at a Mobile Money Summit in Kabul, Afghanistan. The event was co-hosted by USAID Chief Innovation Officer Maura O'Neill.
"Working with the mobile operators and banks, the USAID Mobile Money Innovation Grant Fund will speed the cost-effective roll-out of mobile money," said O'Neill. "It offers the people of Afghanistan an efficient way to extend the reach of financial services to underserved populations."
The $5 million fund will enable public-private partnerships in Afghanistan to expand local mobile money products and services to the more than 12 million people in the country who own a mobile phone and could benefit from a modern financial system.
Read about our mobile banking programs.
Haiti: First Impressions on the Runoff Election
Like most days in Port-au-Prince, Haitians began to fill the streets at sunrise. On this Sunday, however, they were headed to the polls, eager to exercise their democratic right in the presidential runoff and parliamentary elections.
Voters at many polling stations waited calmly in line for their turn to vote. At a few locations that opened late, long lines of would-be voters seemed anxious about missing their chance to cast a ballot in the historic vote.
Read more.
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