Women's health and Coumminty Center's Role in Accessing Information: the case of Center"Casa di Ramia" in Italy

Casa di Ramia ( House of Ramia) is a Women's Public Community Centre. It is base din Verona the region of Veneto in  Italy. The Centre is under direct supervision of the Department for Equal Opportunities of the commune of Verona. The administrators are 2 public social workers. It was opened in the '90 with the intention to create a space for women of different ethnic ,religious,cultural and political background to have a chance to interact. The space CasadiRamia Its main focus has always been to provide the chance to the organisations NGOs informal groups and individuals  wanting to engage with the community can use the space as a hub and co-working place. It has been a place of Empowerment, Education and Dialogue on diverse topics. Talking to the administrator social worker : The place is exclusively for women with the intention to create a safe for women environment. According to the administrator this has allowed the Centre to be known in Verona's  most migrant women as the perfect place to go and participate in activities for women of diverse religions that would be otherwise not comfortable for women to interact with men outside the family. The women that often are present at the centre are Muslim women of North Africa, Nigerian women, East European women and Italian women as well. One of the basic rules is that there is no religious prejudice and all are welcome. IT is also child friendly space. It was well thought as this in fact permits women to bring also their children and interact in the centre with women of other cultures faith and languages as best as they can. The CasadiRamia has a public small library computers and a class room for courses. The courses  given are all for free. some of the courses are lessons of Italian, French, English and Arabic. Among the most important are the Storytelling Project. This a crucial moment,led by a published writer,  the women share their stories of motherhood, trauma of rape, trauma of domestic abuse, as well as racism and access to basic needs in Italy. Often this stories are a hint for the social worker and operators  of association to organise classes on different topics: sexual education  STD,reproductive health care in  Verona, FGM, basic computer skills, legal information on Child rights, Public health care and social welfare access. All these courses are also available at the Public health centre but rarely do the health workers interact with the Community Centres like CasadiRamia and this is in fact weakness due to lack of resources . Many cases of health issues related to violence and reported by the women to the social workers and NGO operators are immediately refereed to the Departments for Equal Opportunities for further referral to adequate services. The Public departments are starting to acknowledge these specific needs and are mapping their services and create network that can be also easily accessible to women that are not Italian, and that rarely speak Italian well before 2 or 3 years. Talking to the women receiving the service: the general response was positive and all replied wishing similar places Community centre existed in different ares of the city too. Many are happy casa that Ramia exists. They wouldn't know where else to spend their time  learning In fact many women come for distant areas just to be able to interact with other women. They feel encouraged to do activities of peer to peer training. Most of the training provided, such as cooking , sewing, computer course and language course it is of course informal education and often no valid certification can be provided for them these women that can be spendable for work. Many of the women that are coming to casadiRamia are unemployed. Sometimes they come seeking for work. Many women say that they are grateful to the safety Italy provides them but now they would like to have intensive  Italian language training so they can read and have access to all the public services themselves without support.

Trough the years I had different occasion to interact with that Community Centre.  I believe "CasadiRamia" has been a pilot project and a mode to imitate for many other neighbour cities, but often failed as they encountered difficulty in having public  government funds. There is a somewhat conservative and right wing politics in Veneto. Thus it impacts not only the immigrant women's inclusion into society trough Gender based research has been done by various university students, including myself, interviewing women on their perception of CasadiRamia.
CasadiRamia 's administrator compiles monthly report to the Department on the activities and the needs of the Community Center and asks for budgeting but often the public funds are not available for all the course is mentioned to be carried out by paid professional or companies thus the certificate Can be used to access the work market. This Community Centre  has been a place of knowledge and possibilities and voice for women, and often tries to address problems and issues that should be the government's public responsibility. The Operators that interact with the women in CasadiRamia often lobby for improvement. There should be better financing and training for the volunteers. Recently the situation has improved. The new politicians in power have supported the opening of similar women's co-working places in the city.
There is still a long away to go. The Conservative mentality needs to change and the Italian  society has been struggling with a growing number of migrants this , added to the fact the Italian economy isn't at its best, doe not help the general sentiment but

Dichiarazione di Beijing ONU e l'Attualità dei Diritti umani delle donne.

Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action- Fourth World Conference on Women - 15/9/1995:
a mile stone in the struggle for  women's human rights    

Reading the Beijing Declaration I get always overwhelmed by the will of women struggling a better world. It was I believe the first time in the history of humanity that such a number of women form all over the world were able to come together and initiate a path for improving women’s lives a round the World. It is a declaration stating that human rights are also women's rights that are being forgotten, . The commitments that interested me are many,here are some:
“196(b) Advocate at all levels to enable women to influence political, economic and social decisions, processes and systems, and work towards seeking accountability from elected representatives on their commitment to gender concerns
249.[...]Governments have expressed their commitment to creating a new development paradigm that integrates environmental sustainability with gender equality and justice within and between generations as contained in chapter 24 of Agenda 21.
291[...]There should be a clear commitment to international norms and standards of equality between women and men as a basis for all actions.”

 
It was the celebration of commitments by nations and governments. It was made clear that even if women came from different countries,different social, economic, religious and culture realities they had common problems. Henceforth women’s human rights violation were declared to transcend the economic status. Women being violated happened among the rich and the poor, the high-income and the low-income. The lack of proper legislation and accountability, the paucity by policy makers in recognising these circumstances, made women twice victims leaving them feel invisible thus reducing them to silence. On that account, Universal Declaration of Human rights is insufficient to safeguard also women,girls and children. This was vastly demonstrated and declared at previous United Nations conferences and summits - on women in Nairobi in 1985, on children in New York in 1990, on environment and development in Rio De Janeiro in 1992, on human rights in Vienna in 1993, on population and development in Cairo in 1994 and on social development in Copenhagen in 1995 with the objectives of achieving equality, development and peace women’s rights violation as societies around the world often consider them as a separate entity with no rights ,or simply lesser right than a man.Societies where women are considered shadows of men are still committing crimes unpunished. It was a declaration of commitments by nations and governments to do better. But it was most of all it was a historic moment that. Not all countries have respected the commitment made in Beijing to finance programs, implement legislation for the safekeeping of women and girls.
The political and social economic situation of many countries at the present moment has become a justification for those governments to not feel as they should respect the commitments taken. There are nations that are not yet feeling pressured enough to respect the commitment develop successful national implementation strategies for the Platform for Action, for instance. Governments where still there is a culture of systematic violence against women and girls girl child. These governments as we all know do not allocate sufficient resources. the strength of these leading women , activists and influential women that helped many more women stand their ground on safeguarding themselves and their children. Some of those strong women had a crucial role in the education and empowerment of women like my mother. Empowered woman that choose not to do Genital Mutilation on her 4 daughters. To educate her son to the respect  women instilling the belief we are equal. Many women like her face hard dissents from the elders of towns that still have power over law. Her strength allowed me to leave the forceful military life.Her strength come from the strength and determination of many before her that were stepped on but managed to bass the light. It is a new dawn. The fact remains: change has come, and many women are empowered, educated and have the know how on the mechanisms of politics and policy making, have the know how to pressure and call on governments to implement change. The important fact is that there is unity in the struggle of women for human rights. Unity inspires many, men and women,  humanity is improving, and that in its self is, for the women that started this struggle decades ago, is a step forward. The women of Beijing had one message: “No more to silence. We are watching, we are empowered and not asking permission anymore. We are here to stay and see commitments been implemented by the countries we belong to”. This being said I believe in better times. After all what are human rights if not the wish and belief that inspire us to work, advocate and demand for the better world the human race has envisioned learning from its mistakes?

Resources and info:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/pdf/Beijing%20full%20report%20E.pdf

BREAKING NEWS EU: Eritrean asylum seekers to be relocated out of Italy

Thousands of Eritrean and Syrian asylum seekers to be relocated out of Italy

This comes as a surprise to Italy. but the fact that many EU nations, have refused to relocated refugees in their countries. The rule set by the Commission provides that they can be "relocated" only "asylum seekers who enjoy the protection regime in 75 percent of the United States. 'One feature that the Eritreans and the Syrians. The former are the largest ethnic group, this year on Italian shores. 41,470 landed on the first of January, they arrived 10,092 representing 24 per cent of the total and therefore have them included in the list in the future will lighten attendance. Syria are landed just 2,790 people, 7 percent. To Italy it will be assisting all other foreigners. The other nationality migrants will be stuck in Italy.  Therefore in the next two Eritreans and Syrian asylum seekers will be relocated out of Italy.

cartoon on refugee welcoming

 The distribution will take place only when they enter the sorting centres in operation 'hotspots' and will come international teams composed of officials of Frontex, Europol and Easo to cooperate with the procedures for the identification and Biometric screening . Every three months, Italy will have to send a report to Brussels to give account of what has been done, so keep up to date the situation of asylum seekers. A further requirement on which they will try to negotiate until the meeting of interior ministers of the EU convened for June 15.

Eritreans trafficking Eritreans criminal business unveiled by Italian TV show

Milano.Eritrean man and woman traffickers says: "nobody works for free".

IENE Tv reporters follow a case involving the negotiations of ransom demand to free a boy in Libya. The middle man was an Eritrean man in Italy. The reporters follow the ransom(more than 1000 euro) to Milan city in Porta Venezia. They end up trapping the bar owner, an Eritrean woman. She orders the waiter in Tigrinya not to answer the reporters questions. And what is worse, she justifies human trafficking by saying in the video "nobody works for free". She admits to human trafficking.

Image from the TV show proving the trafficking

The tragic fact is that the money was payed, but 18 months later still no clue of the victim. He could be alive, or at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea like the other thousands of Eritreans. The Eritrean woman admits knowing that it is trafficking and she has no trouble explaining it away. Porta Venezia, is also where you can find many asylum seekers-man women babies and minors- homeless and waiting for an opportunity to cross Italian borders and go to EU. They wil have to hide so that they avoid being scheduled as asylum seekers in Eritrea. And that is when the traffickers get them, vultures waiting for their pray.
Human trafficking is regular work for them.The fact that behind the hundreds of boats that try to cross to Europe there are smugglers and traffickers is no news. It is no news either that many of the smugglers are Eritreans.
These traffickers in the video are just some of the network exploiting victims. All because the EU would not stop the Dublin Treaty III.

Mother's day with no joy for Eritreans refugee moms

Asylum seekers moms with babies journey to the North of EU. Looking for a new home.
These asylum seekers survived the Sea and now are forced to survive living in the streets of Italy. Mother's day is no happy day for the moms on the journey seeking asylum with no rights in EU because of Dublin Regulation.

mothers day in the streets of Italy

Today, like every day for months, at Milan train station you can witness regular flow of Eritrean asylum seekers wondering around. Young, many underage. Mom and babies. Hundred and more of them. Sick, hungry, tired, scared. At the mercy of Eritrean vultures and other national that are knows for human trafficking. Nobody can be trusted. The Italian and few Eritrean volunteers receive them and try to avoid the first contact between the needy and the smugglers. After all these vultures in Porta Venezia, Milan or at the train station exist because there is the request: demand and supply. They deal in lives.

150 Eritrean asylum seekers in the Milan train station. no home, no food, no water

I met Bianca (Italian) and Magda (Eritrean) in Milan last week. They are but two of the dozen volunteers of Cambio Passo, good people who decided to not sit and wait for the Milan authorities to act (whom are taking their time). Others helping are also Rete Donna Eritrea Italia a volunteer group of Eritrean women in Italy and single people. Cambio Passo act appeals to the heart of all of us: help with small actions. Give water and food to the refugeesin the streets that every day, by the dozens, come to Milan. They are  mostly Eritrean or Syrian.
They are not here to stay...

Eritrean refugee life from Verona to Germany

"I am leaving, i can't live in the streets anymore"
"Isaak, where are you going?"
"For now to Germany. Friends said that i can have a chance at living and working there as  long as i don't show my paper". He might be deported because of the Dublin Treaty that allows all Schengen EU country to send refugees back to the Eu country where they first had they finger prints registered.
Isaak knew that if the German authorities check his finger prints, he would be deported back to Italy, back here in Verona, the city of love, it had no place for him. If you only consider that people are fined up to 500 euro just for giving money to a clochard, it doesn't come as a surprise.

Asmara city, Eritrea

International Day of Solidarity with the asylum seekers in Israel

Rome will join the world solidarity demonstration to sustain the march for freedom and peace that have been going on in Tel Aviv. The demands approached are to respect the asylum seekers and attend to their cases and grant them the necessary documents.

"we didn't choose to be refugees"

Lampedusa: Uncovered attempt at washing away basic human rights

18 Dicember 2013

naked refugees in detention camp in Lampedusa being washed with cold water pump

The well-to-do world is hurrying around to by present. Switch on TV and there goes another reality. Not a Christmas Santa's add. What the hole of Taly watched at 1 pm is the video broadcasted on news time at RAI, Italian TV  channel.
The video shows refugees getting undressed and being washed by water pumps by some men, presumably social workers of some "cooperativa", italian word for "welcoming and acceptance facilities/company", in the middle of the yard of the Center for detention, identification and rejection of refugees in Lampedusa (CIE). the human beings humiliated so, were secretly filmed by another refugee, a Syrian man. Whom, as soon as the keepers of the Center found out  provided to punishing him. No food, water or cigarettes for him for a day. Who knows if the punishment is over him.

At the sight of such images Europe was shocked. the Peace Nobel Europe could not accept such inhumane conditions. Immediately , the High Commissioner's office demanded an investigation regarding the organization,management and standards with in these "prisons at open sky" as we call them here in Italy. I believe it wouldn't be out of order to call these places prisons. Even if as far they are the first form of "accoglienza" italian word for "welcoming and acceptance ".

Link after the jump.

BEING ERITREAN IN 2013

Refugees’ Odyssey without rights in the desert of Sinai

(by Eden Zeriun G)

The Italian television’s channel RAI 1, on the morning of January 2 2013 at 8.30 broadcasted an interview with doctor Alganesh Fesseha CEO of the Gandhi NGO in Milan. The NGO was founded by a group of Africans (doctors, university professors, private business women and men) with the aim "to improve public sensibility towards the problem of abandoning of children and of teenagers and the hardship of women regarding gender issues” as doctor Fesseha says herself. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Sudan are some of the countries where they are intervening with their improvement projects and assistance.

The other guest of the show was Lula Techlehaymanot, cultural and linguistic mediator, human rights activist and actress in the recently finished “Ainom”. The film is about an Eritrean refugee woman that undergoes hardships and abuse by her employer, in order to reunite her family in Italy.

During the interview some facts have come to the light. Facts of the shocking number of immigrants. Information also about the human trafficking and forced labor. The number and facts indicate that 3% of the planet’s population are migrants. Thousands of people migrating from one side to the other of the globe, most of the tie in total absence of their rights. This interview has cover the topic of violence and restrains of these human beings being held hostage in desert of Sinai, obliged to pay sums up to 60,000$ for their freedom, if not they are used as hard labor or their organs are exported illegally to be then sold in organ trafficking market. Not to mention the situation of slavery under which they are obliged to work, the physical and sexual abuse the women are suffering is indefinable. All this is to reach Israel. Where they are unaware, but what awaits them is more discrimination, racist attacks and exploitation to further misery and inhumane treatment living in total illegality.

More facts and numbers:

• 1000 hostages are at the present detained by the Bedouin tribes men often helped by other Eritreans, Ethiopians and Sudanese who’s aim is to gain money through this inhumane “business”.
• 3000 are the people killed between 2009 and 2014.
• 4000 the minors that have disappeared from the refugee camps in Sudan. Kidnapped and most probably have enriched most sadly the human trafficking system.

The Eritreans and Ethiopians that try to reach Egypt and then Israel often hire someone to guide them, and most of the time they turn out to be in business with the kidnappers and so making profit on the hopeful travelers. Most of these innocent people end up in the Egyptian prisons and are often saved from there by NGOs like Gandhi through lots of effort says doctor Fesseha. Up to now they have been able to free 750 prisoners.

The NGO Gandhi tries to create awareness the western world including the Eritreans and Ethiopian that are aware but do nothing to show their support. There must be more demonstration to fight these atrocities that these thousands of people are going through.

A great number of these refugees that receive shelter in the refugee camps in Sudan are women. And when they are kidnapped they have an additional risk: they are subject to gang rape, over and over. They turn out then often pregnant. Pregnant of children that are the fruit of rape and violence.

Women that are tricked by the guides that were supposed to help them cross borders, they often hand them over to the Bedouins that will do as they please with them if they don’t obtain the money asked in ransom. Raped, beaten and tortured. What will they tell these children that are born of such a violent act? Who will they say are the fathers? They will be born to be children of none.

Doctor Fesseha concludes the interview by sending the appeal to Italian authorities in specific and the EU and the International Authorities and community to intervene and come to the rescue of these Women man and the children that are suffering the consequences of the general silence that has been going on for over 10 years. Humanity is being put on a stand and we await for a solution. It is the beginning of a new year. The wish is that it is the year of the awaking of a higher sensibility towards humanitarian crisis such as this. The rage of the women leaving in the western world in knowing of the violence other women are undergoing.

Let’s not forget that those people have left hove only to fulfill a dream we all have of a better life. A more serene life. A fair life in a democratic society.

Knowing this the question that arises is if the declaration of human rights really refers to all human being on earth. Is it really so universal? There is the urgent need to make it so.

So the wish is that this appeal that doctor Fesseha sent to the international community ant the Italian authorities is collected and a real humanitarian action to be made by those that have the authority to make these sufferings disappear without any extreme effort from their side.It is time for action.

Sources:

• Alganesh Fesseha
• Lula Teclehaimanot
• Gruppo Sos Sinai
• Rai uno.
• Al Arabia
• Ong Gandhi-Milano

for more info on NGO Gandhi: http://www.asefasc.org/