About 150,000 sex workers in Bangladesh are one of the worst hit communities.

March 21 was the last time when a 28-year-old sex worker based in Daulatdia, largest brothel in Bangladesh, met a customer. No males were allowed to enter or exit from the brothel, located in Rajbari district, after the local administration imposed a lockdown in the area on March 21, five days before the official general holidays began in Bangladesh.

“In the last 10 years, I have not met with such a horrible crisis. For us, no income means no food. I had only Tk800 (about 9 USD) on March 21 in hand for managing expenses for me and my two children,” said Alif Laila, a name that she uses for customers.

Beset with various troubles, sex workers, who mostly depend on daily income for livelihood, have little scope for saving money for their present and future existence.

“The only dream for me to raise my children is now shattering,” said Laila who does not have any connection with her family.

About 150,000 sex workers in Bangladesh are one of the worst hit communities following the government enforced shutdown in order to maintain social distancing to contain the spread of Covid-19, that so far killed 131 people infecting a total of 4,689 across the country as of Friday, April 24th 2020.

“I do not know what corona [coronavirus] is, but I know what hunger is. All the relief I received — a sack of rice from the local administration, and 1kg potato, onion and salt from the local lawmaker — has already finished. My children have been eating rice with salt and green chilli for the last seven days,” said Laila.

“I had two regular customers or lovers [locally known as Babu]. One of them snatched the Tk800 from me. And, now they are denying me of any help,” she said.

On a usual day, Laila used to have intercourse with five to eight customers and her regular earning ranged between Tk1,500 (18 USD) and Tk3,000 (35 USD). Half of the money was pocketed by the Sardarni (brothel owner, usually previously a sex worker herself), who bought her earlier for the business. Now, her only way of livelihood is to have phone sex with some regular customers.

“I usually got them one or two days a week. In return, they sent me Tk200-300 (3 to 5 USD) via bKash (a medium to transfer money via mobile phone),” she added.
For the first three weeks, customers were interested to do so, but now Laila calls them to provide services via phone because of hunger.

“We are in danger. Even if we escape from the hands of corona, will we die from hunger,” she apprehended.

This article was first published on Dhaka Tribune.

The Government of the Netherlands announces it is contributing additional 10 million euros (US$11.24 million) to the Global Financing Facility (GFF) to help low- and lower-middle-income countries ensure continuation of essential health and nutrition services for women, children and adolescents as they respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new contribution will enable the GFF to provide rapid support to countries to redesign health service delivery approaches for protecting critical care, keeping frontline health workers safe, and ramping up risk communications and community engagement during the crisis.

“The global response to COVID-19 cannot come at the expense of basic health services for women, children and adolescents that save millions of lives every year. We must ensure that the act of giving life does not cost women their own lives. The GFF has a critical role to play to help ensure vulnerable and marginalized women and their families can still access the health care they need during this pandemic. As we ramp up our collective response to mitigate the coronavirus crisis, we need to build stronger health systems to ensure the progress made over past decades in maternal and child health is not reversed over the course of a few months,” said Kitty van der Heijden, Director-General for International Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands.

“We are grateful for this additional support from the Government of the Netherlands, which will enable the GFF to rapidly step up support to our partner countries so that vulnerable women and girls can continue to access family planning, safe births and other essential primary health services during this global health crisis,” said Muhammad Ali Pate, Global Director for Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank Group and Director, GFF.

Since joining the GFF in December 2018, the Government of the Netherlands has invested US$66.48 million in the partnership to accelerate progress on sexual and reproductive health and rights. This additional support brings The Netherlands’ total contribution to the GFF to date to US$77.72 million.

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The world in lockdown has created a profound shock to our societies and economies, and women are at the heart of care and response efforts underway. Primarily as caregivers, women are not just sustaining families, but also serving as front-line responders, mainly in the health and service sector.

In Cox’s Bazar, where the world’s largest refugee camp lies, Rohingya women face further increased gender-based violence due to the heightened tension within households and within the camp. This heightened tension is often caused from restrictions on income generating activities needed to sustain families. Despite these odds, Rohingya women are serving as front-line workers to protect their families and communities. One unique way they are doing this is by producing masks to fill a significant gap of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the market.
Over 50,000 masks are being produced and the manufacturing is being managed by partners in UN Women’s five multi-purpose Women’s centers in the camps, engaging 163 Rohingya women and girls with 46 families run as single female headed households.

One of them, Shetara, a 25-year-old Rohingya woman was trained by one of UN Women’s partner organisations. A mother of 3 children, she fled to Bangladesh during the 2017 outbreak of armed conflict in Rakhine State, Myanmar, when her husband was killed. Back in Rakhine State, her family was self-sufficient, owning land and livestock.
But now in the refugee camp, like more than 859,000 refugees, she is fully reliant on humanitarian aid, just to survive. With the mask production, she is now able to earn 2,720 BDT, that equals to 32 USD per week. This is her first ever income and the highest her family has ever earned. Shetara is happy, “I have money to celebrate Eid and I hope to earn more for my children’s education and for my family.”

This article was first published on UN News.

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During the second quarter of 2020, Share-Net Jordan and the Higher Population Council applied to various grants. We are proud to announce that we got awarded with three grants!

• Know-how of early marriage prevention (Knowledge & Practice):
  In partnership with the King Hussein Foundation – Institute for Family Health, Share-Net Jordan got awarded with a small grant from Share-Net International to produce a video on "Know-how of early marriage prevention (Knowledge & practice)". The objective is to expand knowledge and practice of early marriage prevention to influence policy makers and practitioners of national and international NGOs. The video will provide the targeted audience with a new holistic approach to prevent early marriage. The proposed video will help to explain and spread success and best practices of the Institute for Family Health to change the process of using a one-dimensional approach and move forward to a multidimensional approach that will lead to prevent early child marriage and impact needed.
• Reproductive health of adolescent refugees in camp settings – A qualitative cross-national needs assessment:
  The Higher Population Council and Share-Net Jordan will conduct a qualitative study on Reproductive Health of adolescent refugees in camp settings in cooperation with the University of Edinburgh. The influx of Syrian refugees to Jordan has reached 1.3 million since 2011 and 25% of registered Syrian refugees were women of reproductive age, and of these 2% were pregnant. At the same time Jordanian refugee camps face a high number of teenage pregnancies and early marriages. Therefore, Jordan is facing challenges to refugees’ SRH, including high fertility, early marriage, gender-based violence, and lack of SRH education.
  The aim of the study is to develop an understanding of RH needs and risks of adolescent refugees in the context of forced displacement, and availability of access and barriers to services in which there is very little data available. Policy briefs will help in summarizing the key findings and recommendations. There will be an increased desire for up-taking key findings to advance the development agenda of Jordan, particularly in relation to SDG3 and SDG5. The study will open up crucial spaces for policy makers and humanitarian aid practitioners to critically examine the study findings, to evaluate how the study findings relate to their work, the landscape in which they operate and reflect on current practice and possible new directions.
• Decentralizing Government and Centralizing Gender in Jordanian Municipalities:
  The Higher Population Council and Share-Net Jordan got funded by Hivos, a Dutch NGO, as part of the Women Empowered for Leadership (WE4L) Project to conduct a study on decentralizing government and centralizing gender in Jordanian municipalities. The project’s goal is that by the end of 2020, current female representatives and potential female representatives’ in three pilot Municipal Councils, Madaba, Mahis and Ajloun are empowered through leadership skills development and networking capacities, gender-sensitive local planning and budgeting frameworks, policy-recommendations, knowledge products and tools, and societal advocacy on equal representation to contribute to the achievement of Jordan’s Vision 2030 and other development priorities identified by the Sustainable Development Goals and national sectoral strategies. The project started in March 2020 and sustains over a period of seven months. The WE4L project aims to ensure women have equal opportunities and the capacity to fully participate in political life and decision-making processes, while also creating more public recognition and support for women in leadership positions, through using a combination of advocacy, skills training, knowledge tools and coalition-building. This project fits well within the development agenda of the Higher Population Council which puts forward the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. Therefore, project activities will be implemented in line with HPC’s goals which translates into strengthening women’s leadership and participation in political life and supporting women as active agents in their communities and their equal participation with men in various levels of decision-making.

Currently 214 million women who want to avoid pregnancy have an unmet need for family planning. Contraception alone can reduce maternal mortality by one third, without mentioning the associated reduction in infant and child mortality, and the wider benefits to society as a whole. Since 2013, FIGO’s Postpartum Intrauterine Device (PPIUD) Initiative has institutionalised the provision of PPIUD services into routine maternity care across six countries.

We would like to invite you to a webinar on ‘PPIUD – A Global Opportunity to reduce unmet needs in low to middle income countries’.

The webinar will feature short presentations followed by a live Q&A.

Title: Global perspectives on the cost effectiveness of Postpartum Family Planning
This webinar will share research findings and learning on the cost effectiveness of postpartum contraception and specifically PPIUD across several countries.

Date and Time: Wednesday 24th June, 12.30 London / 14.30 Nairobi / 17.00 New Delhi / 17.30 Dhaka

Registration link: attendee.gotowebinar.com

You can find more information here.

Share-Net International (SNI) has recently launched a call for proposals for the development and maintenance of a Share-Net International digital platform.

As described in the 5 year plan (2020-2024) of SNI, SNI will grow geographically by having more country hubs, members and partners to be able to brand SNI as an internationally well-known knowledge and matchmaking platform on SRHR. In this light, SNI aims to develop a digital platform to ensure knowledge sharing, matchmaking and knowledge exchange can happen more effectively at an international level. This call for proposals aims to identify a suitable, experienced organisation for the development, hosting and maintenance of this digital platform.

The digital platform will be built on the already existing SNI website and integrate Trainers Lab. This website is currently mainly being used for sharing knowledge, including news and resources in the field of SRHR, call for proposals, vacancies, international events and to promote the work of SNI. In addition to knowledge sharing, the new digital platform aims to strengthen the collaboration between all Share-Net country hubs and their members by facilitating international knowledge exchange as well as matchmaking between the different sets of actors in the SRHR field.

Please see the full call here for full details and instructions on how to apply!

Deadline to apply: 01 July 2020, 17.00 CEST

You can still register for the 23rd International AIDS Conference, being held online from July 6-10 2020.
AIDS 2020: Virtual will enable delegates to access and engage with the latest HIV science, advocacy and knowledge traditionally presented at the conference. It will be a compelling combination of virtual sessions and community networking, including exhibitions, workshops, the Global Village, satellites and pre-conferences, that will reach audiences around the world.

AIDS 2020 is a call to action for:

• Resilience to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing global health landscape and to persevere in the face of uncertainty
• Resilience to insist on the fundamental human right to live with HIV in dignity and good health over a lifetime, to bounce back from adversity and to help each other in doing so
• Resilience to avoid fragmentation in the response and to remain united and inclusive in order to meet our common challenges
• Resilience to lead advocacy and programme implementation until new infections are stopped and everyone has access to prevention, treatment and the social support they need
• Resilience to advance science in order to find an effective vaccine, develop new prevention tools, improve treatment regimens, including generic options, identify additional effective behaviour-change strategies and ultimately to produce an affordable and accessible cure for HIV
• Resilience to fight against laws that codify stigma, discrimination and criminalization that restrict gender equality and access to human rights-based responses
• Resilience to join with advocates and scientists working on other health challenges and find common cause to advance universal health-care worldwide
• Resilience to demand the long-term resources needed to achieve global HIV targets in a comprehensive global health agenda and to push back against short-sighted cuts to national and international budgets.

For more information, please visit the official AIDS2020 website.

Authors: Anika Binte Habib, Kishore Kumer Basak, Arnob Chakrabarty

In Bangladesh, menstrual hygiene is a taboo and a heavily stigmatised subject to be discussed openly in public or even in the family. Taboo and misconceptions associated with menstruation cause women and girls to be deprived from their social and cultural independence. Despite the government’s continuous effort in addressing menstrual health and hygiene management in Bangladesh, it continues to be a challenge; especially at schools. While menstrual hygiene management (MHM) issues have recently gained attention in the global development agenda, Bangladesh also focused to increase awareness and access to MHM for women and girls. However, government policy and strategy documents still lack the appropriate measures for improving MHM.

According to UNICEF and WHO (2014), appropriate menstrual hygiene management (MHM) refers to women’s and girls’ access to clean menstrual management materials to absorb or collect blood that can be changed in privacy as often as necessary for the duration of the menstruation period; access to soap and water for washing the body as required; and having facilities to dispose of used menstrual management materials.

Unawareness, shame, and inconveniences linked to menstruation are some of the key obstacles for women’s and girls’ social, economic, political and physical empowerment. Though the policies, plans, and strategies by the Government of Bangladesh addresses women’s rights and health internationally, a greater focus on menstrual health and hygiene practices is still missing. In this light, Share-Net Bangladesh has conducted this review to collect, collate, summarise, and critically appraise and analyse the limitations and scope of work of the current policies, strategies, and plans which are related to reproductive health and menstrual health in Bangladesh. It provides recommendations for the government and the development practitioners towards policy influencing and improving the strategies and plans. The review highlights that current policies and plans need to focus on adequate and inclusive toilet facilities for girls and women in public places. Furthermore, it discusses that special focus should be given to girls with disabilities and their menstrual health. It unfolds that the current policies should address the affordability and availability of the menstrual hygiene commodities for all.

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Self-care interventions are among the most promising and exciting new approaches to improve health and well-being, both from a health systems perspective and for people who use these interventions. The World Health Organization (WHO) uses the following working definition of self-care: Self-care is the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a health-care provider.

Worldwide, an estimated shortage of 18 million health workers is anticipated by 2030, a record 130 million people are currently in need of humanitarian assistance, and disease outbreaks are a constant global threat. At least 400 million people worldwide lack access to the most essential health services, and every year 100 million people are plunged into poverty because they have to pay for health care out of their own pockets. There is an urgent need to find innovative strategies that go beyond the conventional health sector response.

The purpose of this guidance is to develop a people-centred, evidence-based normative guideline that will support individuals, communities and countries with quality health services and self-care interventions, based on PHC strategies, comprehensive essential service packages and people-centredness.

Click here to read the guidelines.

As a global coalition of providers of and advocates for upholding sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in humanitarian settings, the Interagency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises (IAWG) is deeply concerned by the recent letter sent by the acting Administrator of USAID, to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General demanding to ‘remove references to "sexual and reproductive health" and its derivatives from the UN’s Global Humanitarian Response Plan, (Global HRP) and drop the provision of abortion as an essential component of the UN’s priorities to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.'

Since 1995, IAWG – whose members include a diverse group of humanitarian organizations, sexual and reproductive health (SRH) service providers, advocates, and UN agencies – has worked to ensure that essential, life-saving and rights-fulfilling SRH services are a core element of the healthcare services provided in crisis-affected settings. Years of evidence and direct experience have clearly demonstrated the acute need for SRH services in times of crisis and conflict including access to contraception, intrapartum care for all births, emergency obstetric and newborn care, post-abortion care, safe abortion care to the full extent of the law, clinical care for rape survivors, and prevention and treatment for HIV and other sexually-transmitted infections.

Any effective global response to the COVID-19 pandemic must be embedded in an evidence-based approach to public health and in line with existing international legal obligations. The evidence is clear, the de-prioritization of SRH services during previous epidemics has led to stark increases in preventable suffering and death amongst girls and women in humanitarian settings. In fact, past epidemics have shown that shutting down or diverting funds from essential health services- including SRH - can result in more deaths than the epidemic itself. During the 2014-16 outbreak of Ebola in West Africa for example, the number of women giving birth in safe conditions in hospitals and health clinics dropped by 30%, dramatically increasing risk of medical complications, and tragically, maternal mortality increased by 75% during the epidemic.

Every day, more than 500 girls and women in countries with emergency settings die during pregnancy and childbirth, mostly due to the absence of skilled birth attendants or lack of emergency obstetric procedures, as well as from complications of unsafe abortions. Past experience tells us that these devastating numbers will only increase in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In some crisis settings, 65% of women report experiencing either sexual or physical violence in their lifetime, two times higher than the global average and amongst the highest levels of violence against women and girls in the world. Recent country-specific research has already shown an increase in reported gender-based violence as movement restrictions and quarantine measures are put in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19. This type of violence is linked to increases in unsafe abortion, maternal and low birth weight, miscarriage, premature labor, and sexually transmitted infections for girls, women, and gender non-conforming people in humanitarian settings.

Eliminating, reducing or restricting essential SRH services in the global response to COVID-19 will violate international human rights, further harm girls, women and gender non-conforming people already at risk , and, in turn, undermine global efforts to respond to not only the pandemic but the existing emergencies in humanitarian settings.

The IAWG applauds the UN, governments, donors and all gender and health advocates who have committed to the inclusion of SRH services, including contraception and access to safe abortion care to the full extent of the law, in the COVID-19 global funding and response. In the face of a global pandemic, we cannot afford to waste finite time or resources derailing what decades of expert evidence and humanitarian experience have confirmed: that SRHR are human rights, needed, wanted, essential and lifesaving in every emergency.

Read the full Statement here.