Employers in China's Yunnan Province openly discriminate against former drug users living with HIV/AIDS, according to a joint report released by Asia Catalyst and Kangxin Home, a Chinese community organization.
Staff and volunteers of Kangxin Home interviewed community members and found that many had been fired multiple times from their jobs at small businesses such as auto repair shops, tobacco shops and supermarkets.
By Kthi Win
Plenery speech by Kaythi Win, Chairperson of Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers, at Association of Women in Development Forum forum in Istanbul on April 21, 2012. See the exciting video here.Hello everybody,
I am Kthi Win from Myanmar and I am a sex worker. I manage a national organization for female, male & transgender sex workers in Burma & I am also the chairperson of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers. Until now, organizing anything in Myanmar has been very difficult. And people ask, "how did you set up a national program for sex workers?" And my answer to them is "Our work is illegal. Every night we manage to earn money without getting arrested by the police. We used to work and organize together, so we use this knowledge in order to work out how we can set up the National Network without making the government angry".
This topic is about transforming economic power. I want to say to you, that when a woman makes the decision to sell sex, she has already made the decision to empower herself economically. What we do in organizing sex workers, is we build on the power that the sex worker has already taken for herself - the decision to not be poor.
For the past few weekends, I've been gradually deleting information from my Facebook account. Each Sunday, a few more photos come down. That's because I read Rebecca MacKinnon's call to arms, Consent of the Networked, which shows that Facebook, Twitter, and Google are acquiring the size and power of nation-states, but without the democratic accountability or transparency citizens may demand of the states that govern them. Mackinnon asks, "How do we make sure that people with power over our digital lives will not abuse that power?"
By Gregg Gonsalves
Lant Pritchett--a Professor of the Practice of International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School--has been leading a campaign against the election of Jim Kim to the World Bank presidency. While he isn't the only critic of Dr. Kim's nomination, he is among the most vocal and well-known. Though his views are his own, they have been amplified by other leading development economists, such as William Easterly at New York University and people associated with the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC.
Over the past few weeks, Pritchett has publicly questioned Kim's qualifications, saying a lack of training in economics and experience in world finance should disqualify him from the post. He has further suggested that Kim's nomination shows the arrogance and hegemony of American power over the institution. He has called for Kim to step aside for a merit-based election, in which the Nigerian candidate for the post, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (a World Bank, Harvard and MIT alum, also finance minister of Nigeria) would presumably sweep to victory.
A few days ago, Pritchett wrote an article in the New Republic (TNR) which comes clean about the real reasons for the escalating, grasping campaign of opposition to Jim Kim. The piece is called "Why Obama's World Bank Pick Is Proving So Controversial." The title is an overreach: It should really read "Why Obama's World Bank Pick Is Proving So Controversial to Me and My Friends."
Celebrating our fifth anniversary
This year, Asia Catalyst celebrates five years of helping to build grassroots groups in East and Southeast Asia. As part of our 5th Anniversary Campaign, our board has promised to match donations to help Chinese rights advocates come to the International AIDS Conference in Washington D.C. in July. That means $100 donation is worth $200, and $500 is worth $1000. Please make a tax-deductible gift here.A gift of $100 or more gets you a lovely gift book -- with photos and background on our inspiring partners in China and Southeast Asia.
By Willa Dong
When the health needs of female sex workers (FSWs) are discussed, reproductive health and preventing HIV/AIDS are often the first things that are brought up. However, like any other person, a sex worker has a variety of health needs.
I became interested exploring these needs and trying to understand the extent to which mental health is a priority for FSWs last September. Since then, I have looked at these issues in Shenzhen, China, through formal interviews with sex workers and also simply by spending time at a karaoke bar, beauty salons, and in neighborhoods, to get to know sex workers, mommies, and clients. I chose to do a smaller, qualitative study because it was important for me as a non-sex worker to understand the perspectives of sex workers, who already have a clear idea of their needs.
