Mois : février 2006

His full name is Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, but to more than 2 million surgical patients and 16,000,000 outpatients, he’s known affectionately as « Dr. V. » The 83 year-old chairman of Aravind Eye Hospitals, Dr. Venkataswamy is my hero.

Govindappa Venkataswamy – India

Dr. V. was born in 1918 to a farming family in a small village in South India. He received his medical degree from the Stanley Medical College in Chennai and joined the Indian Army Medical Corps to practice obstetrics. It was about this time that tragedy visited Dr. V. in the form of rheumatoid arthritis, a degenerative disease that attacked his hands. Although unable to practice obstetrics, Dr. V. did not give up. He began studying ophthalmology and had instruments specially designed for his arthritic hands – each one custom-made to fill a specific need. These instruments enabled him to perform as many as 100 cataract surgeries a day. He quickly became the most admired cataract surgeon in India. (Read the rest on MY HERO).

In 1956, Dr. Venkataswamy was appointed head of the Department of Ophthalmology at the Government Madurai Medical College, and eye surgeon at the Government Erskine Hospital in Madurai. He held these posts for 20 years and made remarkable contributions to research, clinical service and community programs, as noted below in biographical data. (Read more on One World Sight Project).

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The Professor Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize for 2005 is awarded to the Chechnyan lawyer and human rights advocate Ms Lida Yusupova, in recognition of her brave and unrelenting efforts to document human rights violations and act as a spokeswoman for the forgotten victims of the war in Chechnya. Ms Yusupova struggles to defend human dignity in a chaotic war situation and in a context where the working conditions and security of human rights advocates and journalists are increasingly compromised.

Lida Yusupova – Russia / Chechnya

Lida Yusupova is the coordinator of the Grozny office of the Moscow-based human rights organisation Memorial. This small group is one of the few human rights organisations still operating in Chechnya, providing the world with crucial information on violations of human rights in this Russian republic.

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Linked with Sufia Khatun – Bangladesh, with Rebuilding Through Social Entrepreneurship.

Muhammad Yunus is the founder of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which serves 5 million families with microfinancial services, a founding director of Grameen Foundation USA and a founding member of Ashoka’s Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship (www.ashoka.org). He has transformed the lives of thousands of impoverished people through the grameen bank — a scheme that threw established banking norms to the wind by lending money only to the poorest of the poor. see on The Tribune.

Mohammad Yunus – Bangladesh

Loans of a few dollars for tools to husk rice, to buy a cow or a sewing machine – all small things have made a big difference to people’s lives. Many of the 1.2 million grameen borrowers, 90 percent of them women, had been reduced to begging for a living. Now most of them have a roof over their heads and can support themselves. Yet Yunus does not find his achievements extraordinary, he explains that the problem with traditional approaches to poverty alleviation and development is that they fail to seek things at a grass-roots level.

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Put on this site on June 30, 2006: See also our presentation in french of … encore Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Linked with our following presentations: ‘Muslim protests for pictures‘,

‘Rethinking Islam‘,

‘Talisma Nasreen – Bangladesh & France‘,

‘Safia Hussaini – Nigeria‘,

‘le coran et le prophète – in french‘.

and ‘again Muslim Protests for Pictures‘;

She says: If I were to say the things that I say now in the Dutch Parliament in Somalia, I would be killed.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali – Somalia & Netherlands

First my comment: as many Europeans, I like to know me tolerant, multicultural … as a nice, open, progressive individual, good for this humanity. And suddenly I say stop … no more tolerance with people crying at every moment ‘death to … ‘ … to whatever they do not like, to whomever saying anything wrong in their eyes.

Stop tolerance to this integrisme, say NO to this few crowds, able only to cry ‘death to … ‘…

… and we must help the normal, peaceful muslims how to handle this fanatic crowd. To do that, we must first become able ourselves to know what is our reaction. We cannot longer tolerate the continuous abuse of the human rights of women, of individuals having their own ideas … of people no more wanting follow religious rules but wanting follow modern, rational, logical thinking.

If we want the Human Rights followed, we have to defend them. For everybody.

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Linked to our presentation of SUMMARY REPORT OF THE YAOUNDE COLLOQUIUM of February 4, 2006.

Also linked to our presentation of African Civil Society for the Information Society ACSIS

and the CEFEPROD, a NGO with ECOSOC status, concomitantly Coordinator of the Central African Sub-region Civil Society under the African Civil Society for the Information Society

both of February 4, 2006.

Delphine NANA MEKOUNTE – Cameroun

Présidente ACSIS ( African Civil Society for the Information Society), Representante de SCASI (la Famille Africaine sur la Société de l’Information).

She is also General Coordinator of CEFEPROD, concomitantly Coordinator of the Central African Sub-region Civil Society under the African Civil Society for the Information Society and Representative of the African Civil Society at the World Bureau of WSIS,

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Linked to our presentation on Association for Women’s Rights in Development of February 3, 2006.

Also linked to our presentation on again op-icescr of February 3, 2006.

Magdalena Sepúlveda – Chile & Colombia

First: In the context of UPEACE Activities, Magdalena Sepúlveda is giving the following course: Global and Regional Human Rights Mechanisms, next Feb 27 – Mar 03, 2006, Category: International Law and Human Rights, Location: Council Room. Location: University for Peace, San José, Costa Rica.

Bio: Dr. Magdalena Sepulveda is a Chilean lawyer. She got her graduation in 2000 at the University of Essex, Human Rights Center.

She holds a Ph.D in International Human Rights Law from Utrecht University in the Netherlands and an LL.M in human rights law from University of Essex, UK. She lectures at several universities in Latin America and has provided technical assistance and training on human rights to NGOs, IGOs and governments. Magdalena has worked as a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, staff attorney at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and was the Co-Director of the Department of International Law and Human Rights of the United Nations affiliated University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica.

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Linked to our (french spoken) presentation ‘violence contre les femmes vient à 91% de l’entourage’ of January 2, 2006.

Also linked to our presentation on Rethinking Islam of January 20, 2006.

Also linked t our presentation on Safia Hussaini – Nigeria of October 31, 2005.

And linked to our presentation Moslems Protest for pictures of January 3, 2006.

She says: « Nature says women are human beings, men have made religions to deny it. Nature says women are human beings, men cry out NO! »

Taslima Nasreen – Bangladesh, a physician, a writer, a radical feminist, human rights activist and a secular humanist.

She says:  »They have made Noorjahan stand in a hole in the courtyard, there she stands, submerged to her waist with head hanging. They are throwing stones at Noorjahan, those stones are striking my body. »

She says also: « If any religion allows the persecution of the people of different faiths, if any religion keeps women in slavery, if any religion keeps people in ignorance, then I can’t accept that religion. »

She says: « The political parties use religion for their own interests and whenever they find any criticism about religion, they can’t tolerate it. »

Images of beaten, hanged, dying, desperate and violented women.

Taslima Nasreen says: ‘Humankind is facing an uncertain future. The probability of new kinds of rivalry and conflict looms large. In particular, the conflict is between two different ideas, secularism and fundamentalism. I don’t agree with those who think the conflict is between two religions, namely Christianity and Islam, or Judaism and Islam. After all there are fundamentalists in every religious community. I don’t agree with those people who think that the crusades of the Middle Ages are going to be repeated soon. Nor do I think that this is a conflict between the East and the West. To me, this conflict is basically between modern, rational, logical thinking and irrational, blind faith. To me, this is a conflict between modernity and anti-modernism. While some strive to go forward, others strive to go backward. It is a conflict between the future and the past, between innovation and tradition, between those who value freedom and those who do not.’

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The Glass Ceiling in the Netherlands (for women to rise high level responsibility), Part I – The Dutch Paradox (a discussion) – Dr. Eva Latham, President, Human Rights Teaching International in The Hague, feels the problem in the Netherlands has deep, and unique, cultural roots:

Eva Latham – Netherlands

« It is not only that men do nothing to promote equality in policy measures, but what I observe is also that women who have the power to push for those policies, do not do so. Mostly these are women who themselves got through the glass ceiling by the help of their relationship with men on an individual basis, be it in politics or otherwise. So what you see in the Netherlands, at least when you see women who have broken through the glass ceiling, is that other mechanisms than « gender equality policies » were the reason.

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