Pregnancy and street-lighting: keeping women safe in Haiti

As the recovery in Haiti continues – and the utterly misguided attempts to help begin (or at least you have to hope that’s what that was…) – the aftermath of the disaster adds a new dimension to already pressing issues for Haitian women, as Kate Akhtar, Emergency Programme Officer for CARE International, explains:

“The disaster is having a huge impact on women, especially pregnant women. At least 10,000 pregnant women will need delivery services in the coming month and 1,500 of them will need care for life-threatening complications during delivery. With limited or no access to health facilities, pregnant women are at an even greater risk of complications and death related to pregnancy and childbirth.
Haiti already has the highest rate of maternal death in the region: 670 deaths per 100,000 live births.  In general, approximately 15% of all pregnant women will experience a complication requiring medical interventions. This is even worse in a disaster situation.
 
To help meet the specific needs of pregnant women, new mothers and children, CARE is focusing on the following as part of its immediate emergency response:
-distribution of water purification tablets to provide clean water, particularly for pregnant women and children who are particularly susceptible to water-borne illness such as diarrhoea;
-distribution of emergency food rations;
-distribution of infant kits for mothers with newborns and young babies;
-distribution of hygiene kits that include basic hygiene items such as soap and toothpaste, but also sanitary napkins and underwear for women.”

The UN is now distributing food to women only to ensure it reaches families: but this may add to women’s vulnerability when they are already at an increased risk of violence. Akhtar explains:

“Generally we see a rise in gender based violence during emergencies such as these as people are often displaced from home (1 million people in this case) and access to basic services such as water and electricity is scarce. Women, as the main care givers in a family, are then often required to walk to the water points or distribution sites early in the morning or late at night and are therefore at increased risk of attack from opportunists.
Things that we can do to reduce the risk include ensuring that water points are in open areas with good visibility and are well lit. In addition, any camps arising from the displacement should also be well lit so that walking to and from water points / distribution sites is less risky.”

The worst earthquake to hit Haiti in 200 years has devastated millions of lives. Please support the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal to provide emergency supplies and assistance there. Visit www.dec.org.uk for more details or call 0370 60 60 900.

Change We See

This is a great little campaign bringing together visual demonstrations of the real, positive changes Labour has made to our public services and our lives.

I’m not much good at taking big picture of hospitals, so I had a quick look through my ‘phone for Change I’ve Snapped and came up with this:

We put up posters on the LGBT stall at Manchester Pride asking “What’s next for LGBT rights? Tell us what you’d like to see…”, and at least one commenter wanted mothers’ partners to be able to be named on a child’s birth certificate, without the couple having to be in a civil partnership. Rather delightfully, this changed in law during Pride, while I was sitting at the stall in front of the poster calling for it. So, we ticked it off as ‘done’!

Unemployment’s down? I blame the government

Just a quick one. You know how the media can usually tell you some kinds of news before it’s happened? Like – “Cadbury’s are expected to accept Kraft’s offer” means “Cadbury’s is dead, long live the Kraft subsidiary”?

Well, this morning I was listening to Today (I’m not usually up in time, so this is basically me showing off that I got a working alarm clock), and when I left the house at half eight the news was “Unemployment is expected to have risen again”. It wasn’t until lunchtime that I found out that, in fact, unemployment fell by 7000 in the three months to November. It’s almost as though the measures the government introduced to soften the blows of the recession – investment in the Jobcentreplus, incentives for employers hiring new staff and guaranteed employment or training for the young medium-term unemployed – were effective. Or, as you might say, Labour Is Working.

Contrast this with the Tories’ recession. It’s surprisingly easy to forget, but in 1992:

- unemployment in the North West was 45% higher than it is now
- over 13000 people were unemployed in Salford
- over 36000 people were unemployed in Manchester – twice the current level.

These figures should be repeated and repeated and repeated every single time the Conservatives dare to criticise Labour’s handling of the economy. We were hit by the challenge of a global recession and we responded with measures to get people back into work as quickly as possible; and to save their homes; and to get them the best help and advice. When the Tories faced the same challenge they let thousands upon thousands of people sink; and if the response to the credit crunch had been left up to them they would have done the same again. It’s something that we, and the Tories, and most importantly the voters, must never be allowed to forget.

How the media, the courts and the police allow rapists to get away with it

Trigger warning

We Mixed Our Drinks blogged yesterday on the tabloids’ fondness for reporting ‘cry rape’ stories, and observed:

“when the media continues to publicise such cases yet ignore the majority of shocking and disgusting attacks against women…we end up with the situation we have at present, where a woman who has been raped is automatically assumed by many to be a liar simply out to ruin an innocent man’s life.”

I wonder to what extent this media bias affected, for instance, the respondents to Amnesty’s 2005 survey on attitudes towards rape. The headline finding was that a third of people believed women are partly responsible for rape if they flirt; but it also revealed depressing levels of ignorance about rape statistics. Only 4% of respondents thought the annual incidence of rape was over 10000 – Amnesty quoted the British Crime Survey to put the correct figure at more like 80000. 11% thought it was under 1000 cases a year. When asked about the conviction rate, the average estimate was 26%, whereas the true figure tends to hover around the 6% mark.

Why – as we should never stop asking – is that real figure so low? Could it be related to the fact that a tenth of British people think less than a thousand rapes occur each year? Does the ‘flirts are asking for it’ mentality find its way into the courtroom?

We know it does. And we got a timely reminder last week, when – as Holly Combe reported here – a rape trial collapsed after it emerged that the complainant had discussed group sex with strangers on MSN. As Peter Tatchell points out,

‘The judge and prosecutor appear to have come close to suggesting that the alleged victim had, by sharing her group sex fantasies, invited the rape; that given her racy sexual mores she had only herself to blame.’

Our justice system assumes women who report rape are lying if they have – or have discussed having – an adventurous sex life. The media assumes women who report rape are lying unless – as Hannah at We Mixed Our Drinks puts it – ‘the rape victim happens to be beautiful, white, virginal and wealthy’. But surely those charged with protecting us and pursuing the guilty must take each reported rape seriously, and do their best to collect relevant evidence…?

…We should be so lucky. The Guardian reported today on the IPCC’s findings in the case of John Worboys, a cab driver whom the police first questioned about sexual assault in 2003, then allowed to rape at least 85 more women over five years.

One of the women, ‘Anna’, describes how she was treated – by Worboys and by the police (again, severe trigger warning) – on this video.

‘Anna’ did everything you’re supposed to do. She got a licensed black cab home (because as everyone knows, thanks to Transport For London’s victim-blaming campaign of recent months, getting an unbooked minicab is asking to be raped too). She reported her assault. She did everything she could to try to bring her attacker to justice.

And what did the police do? Read the IPCC findings. They laughed. They assumed from the start that she was lying. They failed to collect evidence; they failed to search Worboys’ home; they failed to question him properly; they failed to give Anna any accurate information about the case. It’s damning.

Then read what the IPCC recommend. Making information available for victims online; regular case updates with victims, sharing of information and intelligence with local agencies where there is a risk to the community; formalising structures to encourage women to report to third parties. Regarding the complaints against individual Met officers, the commission upheld complaints against five out of eight, recommending two should be given written warnings and three should receive words of advice. That’s it.

These recommendations bring the responsibilities right back to the victim. Never mind that Anna, and many other women, did report being raped, and were met with nothing but humiliation. Never mind that more than 80 women went through an ordeal that would not have happened if the police had done their jobs. Forget the idea that they should lose their jobs. Nope – it’s all about encouraging women to report, in the face of a system that could not be more discouraging.

Meanwhile, the media gets away with making rape invisible; the courts get away with deciding which women have the right to complain when they are raped; the police get away with mocking rape victims; and rapists get away with rape. The justice system is rotten with misogyny from beginning to end.

Labour brings in free calls to benefit claim lines

When I first moved to Manchester, I was unemployed, living in a single rented room in Cheetham Hill, and basically penniless. I was very lucky that a friend was able to lend me some money for my housing deposit and for food. By the time I’d bought the essentials – Granny Smiths, tea, soya milk, a packet of biscuits and about twelve packets of noodles – all I had left was change. I needed a job, and fast.

When I schlepped up Cheetham Hill Road to the Jobcentre, I was dismayed to be handed a ‘phone number for claiming JSA (0800 055 6688, if you need it) and told to go away and call it. Don’t get me wrong, the callcentre staff were brilliantly helpful, and I got everything I needed in the post the next day. But the call used up all my precious ‘phone credit (call costs from mobiles obviously vary, but half an hour on hold to the JC+ can cost you up to twelve quid). This meant it was back up the hill to use the Jobcentre’s ‘phone every time I wanted to call a prospective employer.

For me that was a one-off pain in the arse – for thousands, it’s a daily barrier. A lot of people don’t have the regular disposable income or the housing security to get a landline, and the 2008 Nations and Regions Communications Market Report by Ofcom showed that the poorest people are the most likely to rely on a mobile, especially in the North. Leeds CAB published a report last summer on the mobile-related barriers facing people who want to claim benefits, or change their benefits, or check that their benefits are still being paid, or find out why a payment has been missed…or, of course, to try and find a job. Every CAB has to spend time and resources sitting with people who may be perfectly capable of calling the Jobcentre on their own, but can’t afford to. It seems like such a small thing, but it’s a vicious circle of poverty. Or rather – it was.

Yvette Cooper, Labour’s Work and Pensions Secretary, has announced that from next week, O2, Orange, Vodafone, Tesco Mobile, T-Mobile will no longer charge customers for calls to benefit claim lines at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). (Many thanks to Labour Matters for bringing this to my attention!)

Lizzie Iron, Citizens Advice Head of Welfare Policy said:

“We are very pleased to welcome the announcement by the DWP that calls to most of their 0800 numbers will be free to many more customers, thanks to an agreement between the Department and six of the biggest mobile phone operators.

“For many years, we have been concerned about the cost of calling government to access basic services such as benefits and crisis loans. Successive Citizens Advice reports, from Not Getting Through in 2007, to Hung-UP published by Leeds CAB in summer 2009, have highlighted the prohibitive costs for people who do not have a landline, and depend on a mobile phone. In the last two years, DWP has introduced several 0800 numbers to ensure that calls are free from a landline, but these calls can still be expensive from mobile phones.

“It will mean that people on the lowest incomes will no longer be spending money they can’t afford, simply to claim the benefits that might keep them out of poverty. We particularly welcome the fact that it will now be free of charge to claim a crisis loan – which is critical for people in the most urgent need of a financial safety net.

“Other government departments may not have the same opportunity to negotiate with the phone companies, but it is vital that they continue to look at other ways to reduce the cost of calling government, and therefore keep more money in the pockets of those who need it most.

“However we are particularly disappointed that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs haven’t made more progress on this issue. Anyone with a problem over income tax, child benefit or tax credits could still be paying several pounds to call HMRC from a mobile phone. Today’s National Audit Office report is critical of HMRC’s handling of telephone enquiries, and we hope their recommendations are implemented as a matter of urgency by HMRC.”

There we have it – good news from the DWP, keep up the pressure on HMRC. And maybe 3-Mobile while we’re at it?

It’s #mobmonday

Every party political campaigner has their own preferred way of campaigning. Some people like delivering leaflets – it’s quick, it’s predictable, it’s good exercise, you don’t have to engage in conversation if you’re hungover. Some prefer designing the leaflets. Some just wanna blog or tweet. When it comes to getting concrete Voter ID, most people would agree there’s nothing better than a face-to-face conversation with a voter. But that’s time-consuming, weather-dependent, and can be difficult to organise.

That’s why, in my opinion, you can’t beat ‘phone canvassing. No rain, no snow, no gates, no driveways, no stairs, no letterboxes, no dogs. If there’s no-one in you don’t have to walk down the drive and halfway up the street to the next house on the list: you just hang up and dial again. It’s never quite the same conversation you’d get on the doorstep; but it’s still a chat with voters about how they vote, why they vote, whether they vote; and you can make a lot of contacts in not very much time.

A lot of people find the idea of calling strangers really intimidating; and I was exactly the same for a long time. But then when I was 19, my best friend and I spent our summer holidays campaigning for John Grogan in Selby ahead of the 2005 general election. We were given an enormous pile of Voter ID sheets and a back room in the City of York Labour Party office and left to get on with it.

It was a crash course in talking to voters. We got everything. The uplifting ‘I’ve voted Labour all my life’ voters, the disillusioned ‘I’ve voted Labour all my life…’til now’ voters, the depressing ‘don’t vote, luv’ non-voters, the almost as depressing women who say ‘hang on, I’ll get my husband, he deals with the voting’, the older people who keep you on for half an hour because they haven’t spoken to anyone else all day. The unpronounceable names. The people who insist that asking anyone else how they vote is illegal.

It was brilliant. We sat there for four or five hours a day with the Guardian and £1.50 mini-pizzas from the deli round the corner, and by the end of the summer we’d made thousands of contacts and I could talk to anyone on the ‘phone.

I’m not suggesting you sign yourself up for an intensive month of ‘phone-canvassing – unless you’ve got nothing else to do, COUGH Conor Pope COUGH – but if you’re wondering how to get more involved in campaigning for Labour, you should really think about getting on the ‘phone. The key is to be sociable about it. Manchester Young Labour and LGBT Labour NW run a weekly Phone Bank with pizza: it’s great. You can scoff pizza between calls, share your most encouraging conversations with others, and there are rumours of a prize for the activist who makes the most contacts over the weeks.

But obviously not everyone can get to their local campaign centre of an evening, and that’s where Virtual Phone Bank comes in. I’ll let John Prescott explain –

Basically, wherever you are, you can make calls for Labour in any constituency in the UK! And that’s what #mobmonday is all about. We’re harnessing Virtual Phone Bank to get tweeting Labour activists (twactivists?…No) from up and down the country to canvass key seats on Monday evenings and tweet about it using the #mobmonday hashtag. We’ll be making calls between 6pm and 8pm, but feel free to drop in whenever – you don’t have to do the full 2 hours, making just 20 contacts would be a massive help!

We’re starting this evening, with Bury North, and we want you to join us. Email me for details or DM me on Twitter. And happy #mobmonday!

Message from the Red Cross – earthquake in Haiti

A devastating earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale struck Haiti yesterday, killing hundreds and affecting thousands more.

Red Cross volunteers in Haiti are currently assisting the injured and supporting hospitals.

The Red Cross is providing emergency supplies which consist of kitchen kits, shelter kits and tarpaulins, personal hygiene kits, blankets and containers for storing drinking water.

Please give what you can today to support the many thousands of people who need urgent help.

Donate now and help those in desperate need.

Photos, videos and updates on the Red Cross’s work in Haiti are on their Twitter account at twitter.com/britishredcross.

The OAA’s apology to working mothers

The following apology was made to Mumsnet, who duly posted it online:

‘The OAA are running a campaign to demonstrate the power of outdoor advertising to drive people online. This is being done in conjunction with a new website called Britainthinks.com which encourages debate amongst the people of Britain.

We regret any misunderstanding that led to feelings of offence on the part of members of the Mumsnet community.

The intention of the website is to generate debate by posing questions that are deemed to be socially relevant by members of society.

We did not intend to cause any offence and we would stress that the questions posed were not the opinions of the OAA or any of its members.

Three posters were designed to initiate the debate using sport, life and politics and these are supported by dozens of other questions on the website itself.

Regrettably the question relating to ‘career women’ has caused offence and the OAA unreservedly apologises to anyone who has been offended. This was not our intention and, to ensure that this misunderstanding does not persist, instructions have been given to remove this poster.

Subject to the vagaries of the weather, all copy will be removed as soon as possible. The sites currently carrying this poster will be either blanked-out or carry one of the other designs. The poster will also be removed from the Britainthinks.com website. All Digital posters have already been removed.’

Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts has responded with this:

‘Dear (Beta)

WE’RE SORRY

Mumsnet would like to apologise for the strength of feeling expressed by Mumsnetters in response to the poster asking us to discuss our strength of feeling in response to the poster.

The reason we’ve waited until now to apologise is that the strength and nature of our reaction to the poster shocked us. At first we were not sure what to do. It had not been our intention to cause such offence, nor to attract such abuse.

We misunderstood the statement “Agree?” by assuming that this meant that the statement in question was intended to provoke discussion. We now understand that it was ironic casual sexism intended to draw attention to advertising space.

We also misunderstood the statement “If you’ve got an opinion, here’s where to stick it” as suggesting that this was intended to trigger controversial debate. We now understand that it was a request to increase traffic to the advertiser’s website and not to enter into a wider public debate all over the internet.

We accept that in some cases that debate slipped into puerile, juvenile and offensive language. And Haikus.

So in particular, we would like to extend our heartfelt apology to any career persons that we might have offended at the offices of (Beta) and in the wider outdoor advertising industry.

We are profoundly sorry. We hope our apology is accepted.

Yours
Mumsnet HQ’

So much for the power of outdoor advertising over the internet

Christelle Pardo: what the hell went wrong?

(I first published this on The F-Word.)

The Guardian’s Jenni Russell wrote this week about Christelle Pardo, a French woman who leapt to her death, holding her baby, in June last year. Christelle had been denied benefits because as a French national she apparently didn’t meet the residence conditions required.

Russell described this as evidence of a ‘circumscribed’ benefits system, implying an inflexible set of rules not able to bend to Christelle’s individual situation. I’m not so sure.

For income support, you need to satisfy the ‘right to reside’ test and the ‘habitual residence’ test. You pass the right to reside test as an EEA national if you’re working or studying, and after five years of that, you have a permanent right of residence. Christelle had, at the time she tried to claim income support, been in the UK for eleven years, and working between 1997 and 2005. The permanent residence rule only came in in 2006, so sometimes benefit claimants have trouble convincing benefits agencies that the time they spent in the UK before 2006 counts; but Christelle could certainly have claimed permanent right of residence.

So what about the habitual residence test? For this, you have to show evidence of your intention to reside. Christelle worked here, studied here, her sister lived here, she wanted to have her baby here. How could she possibly have been turned down?

The killer is, habitual residence is not defined in benefit regulations. It’s assessed on a case-by-case basis. I asked around at work and more experienced advisers remembered cases where people who had come to the UK forty-five years earlier had failed the habitual residence test. This isn’t the faceless tick-box of a bureaucratic welfare machine. This is an all too human system where individual DWP staff can make a call and call it wrong.

Please note: I’m not saying Christelle Pardo died because DWP Staff Member X said no when s/he should have said yes. I’ve no desire to be sued (or worse, bollocked by my mother, who happens to work for the DWP.) I’m saying: it’s a really complicated system. When it comes to benefits for people from abroad, it’s not a yes or a no: it’s open to interpretation. It’s case law.

So my first answer to what went wrong is: maybe somebody made the wrong call. My second is: apart from a supportive sister, Christelle seems to have been on her own. I can’t find any hint in the papers of anyone taking on her case while she was still alive. Amongst the many lessons of this awful story, I think there is a vital one on the importance of advocacy.

The Child Poverty Action Group publishes elephantine textbooks to empower individuals by informing them of their entitlements and suggesting tactics for having them enforced, and it campaigns for a fairer benefits system; Citizens Advice does likewise at a national level while individual Citizens Advice Bureaux can argue the case down the ‘phone with the Jobcentreplus and send caseworkers to argue claimants’ rights at tribunals. Countless law centres and advice agencies do the same.

In an ideal system the tactics and the tribunals and the arguing wouldn’t be necessary, but this system is a minefield and no-one should be left to wander in it without a guide. The DWP should signpost people to these guides, but they don’t always. If you’re in a situation anything like Christelle’s, or you know anyone who is, please find someone experienced to help – the Community Legal Advice website has a directory of local CABx and law centres, and for people on low incomes they can also offer advice over the ‘phone, through interpreters if necessary.

So what about the ideal system? Taking it back a few steps – Jenni Russell points out that ‘The understandable logic behind the existing rules is that if someone cannot demonstrate that they have contributed to this society then the society has no reciprocal obligation to them.’ Right here, with this idea of ‘contributing to society’, we have ‘what went wrong, part 3′. There’s an underlying assumption (in the benefits system, not in what Jenni Russell said) that by becoming pregnant you stop becoming a contributor.

This is not only fundamentally sexist – the same thing couldn’t happen to a man (one to challenge under the Equality Bill?) – but it’s bollocks. Having children and bringing up children is work. Having children in the UK, and bringing them up to be the UK’s future students/cafe workers/CAB advisers/solicitors/DWP staff/F-Word contributors/whatever, is contributing to the UK’s economy and its society.

This is recognised elsewhere in the benefits system – for example my mother was recently relieved to discover that the years she didn’t work, as a single parent, still count towards her state pension entitlement because she was bringing up children at the time. That’s feminism made law, and it’s high time it was extended to the most vulnerable mothers in society, to stop more women like Christelle slipping through the net.

Today’s message from Gordon

If there’s one thing that our recent by-election successes and this week’s coverage about the £34 billion credibility gap in the Tories’ spending plans shows us, it’s that when we fight, we win.

I know that despite the icy conditions, so many of you are preparing to go out campaigning this weekend. That, for me, says it all about the spirit of our Labour Party – we never give in, we never give up, we fight for progress house by house, street by street, day by day.

If you want to get involved in the greatest fighting force for fairness our country has ever known, click here.

And I hope you will also take the time to check in on elderly neighbours and others in your community, as so many of you have been already, to ensure people stay safe and stay warm during the cold weather.

Earlier today the cabinet met to discuss how we intend to focus laser-like on two fronts: running the country and building the recovery. We are united in serving Britain and working as a team to lead our movement into a big choice election – taking the fight to the Tories and standing up for all the people of Britain.

Labour is on your side – wherever you’ve come from in life and wherever you want to get to in life. So let’s get the message out this weekend; we’re backing Britain’s aspirations, and we’re fighting to win.

Yours,

Gordon Brown

P.S: If you can’t make it out to campaign this weekend you can still make a huge difference to our fight by donating just £10 today – every single penny you give will go towards our campaigning in the coming months.