In His Fight Against WHO, Trump Plays Politics with Human Lives

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Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) Situation dashboard. This interactive dashboard/map provides the latest global numbers and numbers by country of COVID-19 cases on a daily basis. Credit: WHO

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 15 2020 (IPS) - President Donald Trump’s threat to abruptly cut all US funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) has been described as ‘reckless and deadly”—particularly at a time when the Geneva-based UN agency was engaged in an uphill battle against the spreading coronavirus.

The US president, who has dismissed WHO as “China-centric”, has also been accused of playing politics with human lives—while he, in turn, blames the agency for mishandling the coronavirus outbreak and not supporting his earlier decision to bar Chinese from entering the US.

“The WHO failed in its basic duty and must be held accountable,” he told reporters at a White House briefing April 14, “So much death has been caused by their mistakes”, he said, as he continues to exaggerate his charges, as he is usually prone to in his daily life.

In a six-column spread, the New York Times said April 15 that Trump, seeing his popularity poll numbers drop, is blaming WHO for his virus mistakes.

“Recent polls show that more Americans disapprove of Mr Trump’s handling of the virus, than approve,” the Times said.

Asked if Trump was playing politics with human lives during a global health emergency, Abby Maxman, President & CEO of Oxfam America, told IPS: “Now more than ever, the Trump administration should prioritize the health and well-being of the American people, and the most vulnerable people around the globe, over politics.”

“This is a time when we need to put politics and blame aside and work together to save lives and recover from this global pandemic together”.

Asked if other donors will step in to fill the shortfall, if and when US cuts funding, Maxman said that WHO and other crucial agencies leading the response to this global health crisis must have the proper resources.

“We hope to see donors step up, and do whatever they can to ensure that WHO can continue its vital work.”

Asked how feasible is this considering the global economic meltdown triggered by the coronavirus crisis, she said the global economy has taken an historically devastating blow, but nations must prioritize funding core agencies and measures, which include the World Health Organization.

“This is something we simply must find the funds for,” she declared.

Donna McKay, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights warned that by halting funding to the WHO, President Trump is endangering the lives of millions of people around the world, particularly those most at risk during this historic pandemic.

“A global health emergency demands a global response,” she said.

The World Health Organization provides vital international assistance and coordination. That President Trump would halt funding to WHO in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic is reckless and risks contributing to widespread death and suffering, McKay said.

“This move comes at precisely the wrong time. The pandemic is beginning to spread from high-income countries to countries with weak health systems. We urgently need more concerted, coordinated, and effective action from the global community, not less. And we need global leadership that understands and embraces coordination and collaboration,” she declared.

When Trump first singled out WHO for criticism, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was blunt in his response, (even though he did not mention the US president by name): “If you don’t want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it.”

Credit: WHO

Hitting back at Trump, without naming him, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the WHO, with thousands of its staff, is on the front lines, supporting Member States and their societies, especially the most vulnerable among them, with guidance, training, equipment and concrete life-saving services as they fight the virus.

“It is my belief that the World Health Organization must be supported, as it is absolutely critical to the world’s efforts to win the war against COVID-19.”

This virus, he pointed out,“is unprecedented in our lifetime and requires an unprecedented response.”

“Obviously, in such conditions, it is possible that the same facts have had different readings by different entities. Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis”.

The lessons learned will be essential to effectively address similar challenges, as they may arise in the future.

But now is not that time, he cautioned.

And it is also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus, said Guterres.

In statement released April 14, Maxmansaid picking a fight with the World Health Organization during a pandemic is shortsighted, to say the least.

“Instead of bringing us together through this global crisis, President Trump has attacked leaders and agencies around the world, seeking to deflect blame for his own administration’s failings.”

“With this latest move to hold back funding from the WHO, President Trump is crippling any hopes for the responsible international cooperation and solidarity that is critical to save lives and restore the global economy,” warned Maxman.

“Withholding funding and blame-shifting means wasted time and needless death, misery, and poverty. And it gets the US and the world no closer to an end to this disaster.

“As we at Oxfam scale up efforts to respond to the crisis in more than 50 countries around the world, we see firsthand that strong coordination and funding is vital to save lives on the ground.

“No one individual, community, or country can deal with this crisis alone. We must work together, in our communities and across borders, with dignity and compassion. No one is safe until everyone is safe. President Trump must immediately reverse course and act like the global leader the world expects.”

The WHO’s total programme budget for 2018-2019 was $4.4 billion, increasing to $4.8 billion for 2020-2021.

WHO has two primary sources of revenue: assessed contributions (paid by member states and based on each country’s income and population) and voluntary contributions (additional funds provided by member states, private organizations and individuals.)

The US pays 22 percent of the budget, as it does with the United Nations.

McKay said while the WHO’s COVID-19 response has been imperfect, the idea of ending U.S. funding for this vital UN body defies logic and imperils millions.

For one, leading U.S. and international researchers are collaborating on global vaccine trials through WHO, which is a hub of such essential research.

“President Trump appears to be looking for a scapegoat for the pandemic. He is trying to deflect attention from the devastating U.S. death toll and his own repeated failures to respond promptly and coherently to the pandemic,” she noted.

McKay said: “Rather than attack the professionals at the WHO, President Trump should get health workers the personal protective equipment that they are dying without. He should collaborate with states and cities on a coordinated national response guided by science and human rights, not ideology and xenophobia. He must listen to medical experts at this time of great national and global peril.”

“All institutions responding to COVID-19, be it at a local, national, or global level, should be transparent and accountable. But eviscerating the capacity of the world’s essential health institution at a time like this is a profound mistake,” she declared.

Child sex abuse in Pakistan's religious schools is endemic

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PAKPATTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Muhimman proudly writes his name slowly, carefully, one letter at a time, grinning broadly as he finishes. He’s just 11 years old and was a good student who had dreams of being a doctor.

(1 of 6) Pakistani children take part in rally against child abuse, in Islamabad, Pakistan. The Associated Press collected dozens of police reports from police stations across Pakistan that allege sexual harassment, rape and physical abuse by Islamic clerics teaching in madrassas or religious schools in Pakistan, where many of the country’s poorest study.

April 13, 2020

School frightens him now. Earlier this year, a cleric at the religious school he faithfully attended in the southern Punjab town of Pakpattan took him into a washroom and tried to rape him. Muhimman's aunt, Shazia, who wanted only her first name used, said she believes the abuse of young children is endemic in Pakistan’s religious schools. She said she has known the cleric, Moeed Shah, since she was a little girl and describes him as an habitual abuser who used to ask little girls to pull up their shirts.

“He has done wrong with boys and also with two or three girls,” Shazia said, recalling one girl the cleric brutalized so badly he broke her back. An investigation by The Associated Press found dozens of police reports, known here as First Information Reports, alleging sexual harassment, rape and physical abuse by Islamic clerics teaching in madrassas or religious schools throughout Pakistan, where many of the country’s poorest study. The AP also documented cases of abuse through interviews with law enforcement officials, abuse victims and their parents. The alleged victims who spoke for this story did so with the understanding only their first names would be used.

There are more than 22,000 registered madrassas in Pakistan, teaching more than 2 million children. But there are many more religious schools that are unregistered. They are typically started by a local cleric in a poor neighborhood, attracting students with a promise of a meal and free lodging. There is no central body of clerics that governs madrassas. Nor is there a central authority that can investigate or respond to allegations of abuse by clerics, unlike the Catholic Church, which has a clear hierarchy topped by the Vatican.

The government of Prime Minister Imran Khan has promised to modernize the curriculum and make the madrassas more accountable, but there is little oversight. Police say the problem of sexual abuse of children by clerics is pervasive and the scores of police reports they have received are just the tip of the iceberg. Yet despite the dozens of reports, none have resulted in the conviction of a cleric. Religious clerics are a powerful group in Pakistan and they close ranks when allegations of abuse are brought against one of them. They have been able to hide the widespread abuse by accusing victims of blasphemy or defamation of Islam.

Families in Pakistan are often coerced into “forgiving” clerics, said Deputy Police Superintendent Sadiq Baloch, speaking in his office in the country's northwest, toward the border with Afghanistan.

Overcome by shame and fear that the stigma of being sexually abused will follow a child into adulthood, families choose instead to drop the charges, he said. Most often, when a family forgives the cleric the investigation ends because the charges are dropped.

“It is the hypocrisy of some of these mullahs, who wear the long beard and take on the cloak of piety only to do these horrible acts behind closed doors, while openly they criticize those who are clean shaven, who are liberal and open minded,” Baloch said. “In our society so many of these men, who say they are religious, are involved in these immoral activities.”

‘I WANT THIS MULLAH HANGED’ Police officials say they have no idea how many children are abused by religious clerics in Pakistan. The officials said clerics often target young boys who have not yet reached puberty in part because of the restrictive nature of Pakistan's still mostly conservative society, where male interaction with girls and women is unacceptable. The clerics for the most part had access to and trust with boys, who are less likely to report a sexual assault.

Eight-year-old Yaous from Pakistan’s remote northern Kohistan region is one of those boys. Yaous’ father was a poor laborer who had no education and spoke only the local language of his area, yet he wanted to educate his son. He had heard of a religious school in Mansehra, several hundred kilometers (miles) south of his village, where other boys from the area had gone. Too poor to even own a phone, his father went for months without speaking to his son.

Yaous is small for his eight years. His features are slight. In an interview with the AP, with his uncle interpreting, Yaous' tiny body shivered as he told of his ordeal. It was near the end of December last year — a holiday at the madrassa. Most of the students had left. Only Yaous and a handful of students had stayed behind. His village was hours away, and the cost of transportation home was too much for his parents.

The other students had gone to wash their clothes and Yaous said he was alone inside the mosque with Qari Shamsuddin, the cleric. The sexual assault was unexpected and brutal. The boy said Shamsuddin grabbed his hand, dragged him into a room and locked the door.

“It was so cold. I didn’t understand why he was taking my warm clothes off,” Yaous said, his voice was barely a whisper. As Yaous remembered what happened, he buried his head deeper into his jacket. The cleric grabbed a stick, he said. It was small, maybe about 12 inches. The first few sharp slaps stung.

“The pain made me scream and cry, but he wouldn’t stop,” Yaous said. The boy was held prisoner for two days, raped repeatedly until he was so sick the cleric feared he would die and took him to the hospital.

At the hospital, Dr. Faisal Manan Salarzai said Yaous screamed each time he tried to approach him. Yaous was so small and frail looking, Salarzai called him the “baby.” “The baby was having a lot of bruises on his body — on his head, on his chest, on his legs, so many bruises on other parts of his body,” Salarzai said.

Suspicious, Salarzai ordered Yaous moved to the isolation ward where he examined him, suspecting he had been sexually assaulted. The examination revealed brutal and repetitive assaults. But Solarzai said Yaous' uncle refused to believe his nephew was sexually assaulted, instead he said the boy had fallen down. “He said the uncle finally said: ‘If news spreads in our area that he has been sexually assaulted it will be very difficult for him to survive in our area.'”

“He was not willing to talk about it or even think that he was sexually assaulted,” said Solarzai. But the evidence was overwhelming and the doctor contacted the police. The cleric was arrested and is now in jail. Police have matched his DNA samples to those found on Yaous. But despite the arrest, fellow clerics and worshippers at the Madrassah-e-Taleem-ul-Quran mosque located in a remote region of northwest Pakistan dispute the charges. They say Shamsuddin is innocent, the victim of anti-Islamic elements in the country. The clerics and worshippers also say the accusation is part of a conspiracy to discredit Pakistan’s religious leaders and challenge the supremacy of Islam, a rallying cry often used by right-wing religious clerics seeking to enrage mobs to assert their power.

Yaous’ father, Abdul Qayyum, said he was ashamed he had not spoken to his son in more than three months before the attack happened. “I want this mullah hanged. Nothing else will do,” Qayyum said. ‘FORGIVE ME’

Young boys are not the only victims of sexual abuse by religious clerics. Many young girls like Misbah, who is from a deeply conservative south Punjab village of Basti Qasi, have also been targeted by religious leaders.

Her father, Mohammad Iqbal, isn’t exactly sure how old Misbah is. He thinks she is 11 because in rural Pakistan many births are not registered or are registered much later, and it is just a guess when children are born. They share their small cinderblock structures with several goats and an extended family made up it seems of mostly children who play tag and run around the dirt compound. Misbah, who struggled for words, said she was raped in the mosque next door, where she had been studying the Quran for three years.

The assault happened one morning after she stayed behind to sweep the mosque. The other children had been sent home and the cleric, someone she trusted, asked Misbah to help. “I had just began to clean when he slammed shut the mosque door,” she said in her native Saraiki language. “I didn’t know why and then he suddenly grabbed me and pulled me into a nearby room. I was screaming and shouting and crying. She couldn't say how long the assault went on. All she could remember was screaming for her father to help her but he wouldn't stop, he wouldn't stop, she repeated.

It was her uncle, Mohammed Tanvir, who rescued her. He had been on his way to college but stopped at the mosque to use the washroom. He noticed a pair of child’s shoes outside the door. “Then I heard screaming from inside, she was screaming for her father,” Tanvir said. He smashed the door down saw his niece sprawled and naked on the floor. “It looked as if she had fainted,” he said. Her blood-stained pants were in a corner. The cleric knelt at his feet.

“‘Forgive me’ he kept saying to me,’” Tanvir recalled. The cleric was arrested but freed on bail. ‘SUCH A BEAST SHOULD NOT NE SPARED' In the wake of the attempted rape of Muhimman, the young boy who had proudly showed his writing skills, his aunt said there has been a concerted attempt to silence the family.

"The village people say these are our spiritual leaders and the imams of our religious places, and refuse to kick him out,” Shazia said After the attack on her nephew, she said, the villagers came to their home and pleaded with them to forgive the cleric, Moeed Shah, who had fled the area.

“They all came to our home and they know we are poor and he is an imam and they said we should forgive him but we won’t,” Shazia said. She said her father, Muhimman’s grandfather, refused. Shah has yet to be arrested, even though the assault was filmed by several village boys who broke down the door to the washroom and frightened Shah away as he tired to rape Muhimman.

Police say they are investigating and a charge has been filed, but Shah is a fugitive. Some of the neighbors near the mosque said police are not searching vigorously for him. They seemed angry but also resigned to the fact that he would not be jailed.

Muhimman's aunt was inconsolable. “Such a beast should not be spared at all,” Shazia said.

Associated Press writers Zarar Khan in Islamabad, Asim Tanvir in Multan, Pakistan, and Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report

Record oil output cuts fail to make waves in coronavirus

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SINGAPORE/LONDON (Reuters) - The minimal impact on oil prices from a global deal on record output cuts showed that oil producers have a mountain to climb if they are to restore market balance as the coronavirus shreds demand and sends stockpiles soaring, industry watchers said.

FILE PHOTO: A sticker reads crude oil on the side of a storage tank in the Permian Basin in Mentone, Loving County, Texas, U.S. November 22, 2019. REUTERS/Angus Mordant/File Photo

A day after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies led by Russia agreed to reduce output by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) in May and June - equal to nearly 10% of global supply - prices barely moved, oscillating in and out of positive and negative territory. [O/R]

Both Brent LCOc1 and WTI CLc1 have lost more than half of their value this year.

Graphic - Global oil prices down 50%-60% this year: here

The cut by OPEC+ may be more than four times deeper than the previous record set in 2008 and overall oil supply may shrink by twice that with other measures, but the reduction remains dwarfed by a demand drop predicted by some forecasters to be as much as 30 million bpd in April.

“Even if these cuts provide a floor to prices they will not be able to boost prices given the scale of inventory builds we are still staring at,” Energy Aspects analyst Virendra Chauhan said, referring to fast-filling storage amid the slide in demand from end-users.

“The absence of hard commitments from the United States or other G20 members is (a) shortcoming of the deal.”

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said that G20 nations had pledged to cut about 3.7 million bpd and that strategic reserves purchases would reach roughly 200 million barrels over the next couple of months, bringing the total reduction of oil in the market to about 19.5 million bpd.

But big producers such as Canada, Norway and the United States have yet to commit publicly to fixed quotas.

“The deal failed to reach the reduction levels anticipated by the market,” Takashi Tsukioka, president of the Petroleum Association of Japan (PAJ), said in a statement.

“We hope OPEC+ will continue their talks to stabilise oil markets,” he said.

Meanwhile analysts said that while the core number in the deal suggests a near 10 million bpd cut, Middle East producers such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait may have to reduce by more than the 23% cut to which they signed up.

Graphic - Brent 6-month contango steeper after global output cut deal: here

FOCUS ON RESERVES

However, energy analysts at FGE expect oil stockpiles in developed nations to grow in the second quarter to levels last seen in 1982.

The Brent futures contango, a market structure whereby future prices are higher than those in the nearer term, deepened on Monday, for both a six-month horizon LCOc1-LCOc7 and for a year ahead. LCOc1-LCOc13

Graphic - Brent crude forward curve: here

FILE PHOTO: The sun sets behind a crude oil pump jack on a drill pad in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas, U.S. November 24, 2019. REUTERS/Angus Mordant/File Photo

“(But) as a result of the production cuts, the global oil market will have the largest spare capacity in at least a decade, leading to a flatter Brent crude oil curve,” Bank of America analysts said.

The next major focus for markets will be numbers from the U.S. Department of Energy on its strategic petroleum reserves (SPR).

A veteran Singapore oil trader, who declined to be named due to company policy, said that inventory build will continue, albeit at slower pace because of the OPEC+ pact. Saudi Arabia cut its crude selling prices to Asia on Monday, while lifting prices for the United States and leaving prices to Europe unchanged.

“Most of the SPR (held by countries around the world) are pretty full already. Probably China still has some room, but the rest, I doubt there is anything significant,” he added.

Highlighting the scarcity of available storage capacity, Australia’s Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor on Monday said that the country is working on an agreement to buy oil and store it with the U.S. strategic reserves.

China, the world’s largest oil importer, remains the outlier. Its refiners are set to raise crude oil throughput this month by 10% from March as the country where the coronavirus originated recovers from the outbreak faster than elsewhere.

“China is unlikely to make any firm commitment, especially as Far East consumers are still paying a premium for Mideast supplies versus western consumers,” one Beijing-based state oil company official said on condition of anonymity, citing company policy.

“Outside the government reserve stockpiling, which is highly guarded information, commercial reserve managers at national oil firms will only look at the economics and tankage space available to decide purchases,” said the official, referring to commercial reserve departments under state refiner Sinopec and PetroChina.

These centres operate independently from the SPR, the official said, and often act as a swing supplier to state oil refineries by loaning crude to plants at a higher price and making a profit when retrieving them at a lower cost.

“China ... will ultimately be constrained given this is a demand, not supply-led issue,” said Energy Aspects analyst Chauhan.

Elsewhere, India is diverting 19 million barrels of Middle East oil from state-run companies to SPRs to help refiners to offload surplus oil, three sources said.

A Gender-equal Ethiopian Parliament can Improve the Lives of all Women

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In 1991, the share of seats held by women in the Ethiopian parliament was under 3 percent. Today it stands at 38 percent, almost twice the ratio of women in the United States Congress. Experts say when women are better represented in government office, the gains are likely to spill down and improve the lives of all women.

Sahle-Work Zewde is Ethiopia's first female president. Since coming to power in 2018, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has reorganised the cabinet to ensure that 50 percent of the government’s top ministerial positions have been given to women. Never before in Ethiopia have so many high-ranking government positions been held by women. Courtesy: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

YORK, United Kingdom, Apr 10 2020 (IPS) - Recent gains by women in the Ethiopian political landscape offer a chance to improve gender equality around the country and put an end to long-standing societal iniquities.

Since coming to power in 2018, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has reorganised the cabinet to ensure that 50 percent of the government’s top ministerial positions have been given to women.

Sahle-Work Zewde became the country’s first female president, while Aisha Mohammed became the country’s first defence minister. Never before in Ethiopia have so many high-ranking government positions been held by women.

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In 1991, the share of seats held by women in the Ethiopian parliament was under 3 percent. Today it stands at 38 percent, almost twice the ratio of women in the United States Congress.

But, at the same time, stark gender disparities persist all around the country. The hope is that improved representation in the federal government will tangibly affect and improve the status of Ethiopia’s more than 50 million women and girls.

“There is strong evidence that as more women are elected to office, there are more policies enacted that emphasise quality of life and reflect the priorities of families, women and minorities,” Katja Iversen, president of Women Deliver, an international organisation advocating around the world for gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women, tells IPS.

“Studies also show that women are more likely than men to work across party lines, help secure lasting peace, and prioritise health, education and other societal priorities key to the wellbeing and prosperity of both constituents and societies at large.”

At the same time, there are concerns that Ethiopia’s most recent female politicians are not in elected positions rather are making up a quota. 

“The women who are in power are more loyal to the prime minister than the public that is why they find it difficult to act—for fear of disappointing the person who put them there,” Hadra Ahmed, a freelance Ethiopian journalist, tells IPS.

“We can only say women are in politics when they are represented as candidates and as decision makers,” she adds.

Women in Ethiopia have long faced systemic inequities. The discrepancies begin early and often persist throughout Ethiopian women’s lives. Nearly twice as many men than women over age 25 have some secondary education. Women often face more economic constraints than men, including less access to credit and limited market access.

“Ethiopians strongly believe that women can never be as good as men and this is specially heart breaking when it comes from your mother [or] a well-educated person that you probably look up to [such as] your teacher,” Ahmed says.

“And the whole system tells you that you are not as capable through different policies like affirmative actions that lower the passing grade rather than helping girls to study and making sure they make it to school in time.”

Female genital mutilation rates remain high, with 74 percent of girls and women aged 15 to 49 years of age experiencing FGM, according to UNICEF. Child marriage still occurs, with about 58 percent of Ethiopian females marrying before they turn 18.

Eighty percent of Ethiopia’s population resides in rural areas and women provide much of the agricultural labour in these communities, while shouldering the majority of child-rearing duties.

But the contributions of women can go largely unrecognized. Fathers or husbands often restrict access to resources and community participation. One in three women experience physical, emotional or sexual violence, according to USAID.

“Ethiopian society practices negative social norms that reinforce inequality and perpetuate deep power and gender imbalances,” Dinah Musindarwezo, director of policy and communications for Womankind Worldwide, a global women’s rights organisation working in partnership with women’s rights organisations and movements, tells IPS.

“The perceptions and attitudes that women should belong to the kitchen and men in the board room are widely spread across the world. Although we have seen changes and progress towards women participating in public sphere including in political leadership, we are seeing less progress of men entering the kitchen and taking leadership in care work. Globally, women still perform majority of unpaid and domestic work.”

Ethiopia is no exception, Musindarwezo says, illustrated by the widespread expectation that women should not only be the primary childcare providers but they should also perform the majority of unpaid and domestic work.

In Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, life for the majority of women follows a traditional course, centred on family and agriculture. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

In 2017, Ethiopia ranked 121 out of 160 countries on a Untied Nations gender equality index based on various social, health and political factors.

“If you look at the experience of other countries like India, the media representation of strong women is what helped women become stronger in the society,” Ahmed says. “Seeing a stronger version of us somewhere pushes us to be better. Assigning to women a quota in government positions and exploiting them in these positions will not solve anything.”

Iverson says that in order to make sure women’s political participation is not only symbolic, governments must also fully commit to gender equality through equal pay, affordable childcare, gender sensitive budgeting and auditing, and paid parental leave.

Parental leave—including paternity leave—has proven a significant “norm changer” in improving women’s participation in the workforce, Iverson says. When men take paternity leave, she explains, it both affirms that caregiving is everyone’s responsibility, helps improve pay equity, and makes it easier for more women to be successful and climb the career ladder.

Despite the Ethiopian government’s bold moves to empower female politicians, the country’s fraught political realm—which can be dangerous for anyone, regardless of sex—still poses many hurdles for women to overcome, especially given the pernicious influence of social media.

“Women politicians face unique forms of online and offline attacks and deliberate actions to discourage their participation in politics,” Daniel Bekele, commissioner of the Ethiopia Human Rights Commission, said during the keynote speech at the “Women’s Political Participation and Election in Ethiopia: Envisioning 2020 and Beyond for Generation Equality” national conference at the end of 2019.

“This reflects how patriarchal [our] society is in its functions.”

Musindarwezo notes that in addition to having women in political leadership, it’s just as important to create an environment that is conducive for women to be effective leaders.

“Often times we expect women to magically address all the issues especially gender issues without removing structural barriers they face,” Musindarwezo says. “Women political leaders face barriers such as their voices being overshadowed by political parties’ voices, limited access to adequate resources they need to make a difference and being held to different standards to those of men. Women leaders often face biased public criticism, harassment and intimidations just because they are women.”

Bekele says that Ethiopian women face particular challenges in times of elections that seriously impact and discourage their participation. Ethiopia is due to hold an all-important national election this year, but currently it has been delayed due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.

“There must also be implemented legal protections for women including laws against gender-based violence, policies regarding sexual harassment, and accessible justice systems for accountability,” Iverson says. “Countries must ditch discriminatory laws that are holding women back and enact legal frameworks that advance gender equality at work, in society and at home.”

Those at Women Deliver note how, to Ethiopia’s credit, it has brought in a new law that annulled previous legal provisions that gave authority to a husband over a couple’s assets and whether his wife could work outside of the home.

As a result of the legal change, spouses are now equal with regard to the administration of assets, and a husband cannot unilaterally prevent his wife from working. The World Bank estimates that this law has enabled an increase in the participation rate of women in productive sectors.

Despite continuing challenges for Ethiopian women, change is afoot beyond the political level. In the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Setaweet is the country’s first feminist research and training company, which offers tailor-made gender equality services for schools, agencies and corporate companies. Its flagship project is a feminist curriculum for secondary school students dealing with femininity and masculinity, healthy relationships and positive self-images.

“Women are powerful agents of change, and their participation at all decision-making levels is a prerequisite for politics and programs that reflects societies and are effective, sustainable and inclusive,” Iversen says.