#leader

Nancy Pelosi privée d’hostie, nouvel épisode de la « guerre de la communion » américaine
▻https://www.la-croix.com/Religion/Nancy-Pelosi-privee-dhostie-nouvel-episode-guerre-communion-americaine-202

L’archevêque de San Francisco, Mgr Salvatore Cordileone, a informé la présidente de la Chambre des représentants américaine qu’elle ne serait plus autorisée à communier dans son diocèse. L’élue démocrate est sanctionnée pour ses prises de position en faveur du droit à l’#avortement.

VIDEO. L’ex-président américain George W. Bush fait un lapsus et critique « une invasion totalement injustifiée de l’#Irak... Je veux dire de l’Ukraine »
▻https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/europe/manifestations-en-ukraine/video-l-ex-president-americain-george-w-bush-fait-un-lapsus-et-critique

#leadership #crimes #états-unis

Aux Etats-Unis, la pénurie de lait pour bébé tourne à la crise politique
►https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1883119/penurie-lait-maternise-etats-unis-crise-politique-biden

(ex :
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2022/05/13/aux-etats-unis-la-penurie-de-lait-pour-bebe-tourne-a-la-crise-politique_6125)

Quand le Sud refuse de s’aligner sur l’Occident en Ukraine,
par Alain Gresh (Le Monde diplomatique, mai 2022)
▻https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2022/05/GRESH/64659

https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/IMG/arton64659.jpg

(...) Si, au Nord, les voix discordantes sur la guerre en Ukraine restent rares et peu audibles tant une pensée unique en temps de guerre s’est à nouveau imposée (2), elles dominent au Sud, dans ce « reste du monde » qui compose la majorité de l’humanité et qui observe ce conflit avec d’autres lunettes. Sa vision a été synthétisée par le directeur général de l’Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS), M. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, qui regrette que le monde n’accorde pas une importance égale aux vies des Noirs et des Blancs, à celles des Ukrainiens, des Yéménites ou des Tigréens, qu’il « ne traite pas la race humaine de la même manière, certains étant plus égaux que d’autres (3) ». Il en avait déjà fait le triste constat au cœur de la crise du Covid-19.

C’est une des raisons pour lesquelles un nombre significatif de pays, notamment africains, se sont abstenus sur les résolutions de l’Organisation des Nations unies (ONU) concernant l’Ukraine — des dictatures bien sûr, mais aussi l’Afrique du Sud et l’Inde, l’Arménie et le Mexique, le Sénégal et le Brésil (4). Et, fin avril, aucun pays non occidental ne semblait prêt à imposer des sanctions majeures contre la Russie.

Comme le fait remarquer Trita Parsi, vice-président du think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (Washington, DC), de retour du Forum de Doha (26-27 mars 2022), où se sont côtoyés plus de deux mille responsables politiques, journalistes et intellectuels venus des quatre coins de la planète, les pays du Sud « compatissent à la détresse du peuple ukrainien et considèrent la Russie comme l’agresseur. Mais les exigences de l’Occident, qui leur demande de faire des sacrifices coûteux en coupant leurs liens économiques avec la Russie sous prétexte de maintenir un “ordre fondé sur le droit”, ont suscité une réaction allergique, car l’ordre invoqué a permis jusque-là aux États-Unis de violer le droit international en toute impunité » (5). (...)

#Ukraine

Where is the “Public” in American Public Health? Moving from individual responsibility to collective action - ScienceDirect
▻https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589537022000712

https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S2589537022X00023-cov150h.gif

Quand la #santé_publique se résume essentiellement à la responsabilité individuelle.

American individualism continues to prove incommensurate to the public health challenge of COVID-19. Where the previous US Administration silenced public health science, neglected rising inequalities, and undermined global solidarity in the early pandemic response, the Biden Administration has sought to take action to respond to the ongoing pandemic. However, the Administration’s overwhelming focus on individual responsibility over population-level policy stands in sharp contrast to fundamental tenets of public health that emphasize “what we, as a society, do collectively to assure the conditions for people to be healthy”.1

#états-unis #leadership

Combattre les Russes jusqu’au dernier européen
#états-unis
#leadership
#sans_vergogne

Le risque de « co-belligérance » freine l’aide de l’Otan à l’Ukraine
▻https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/geopolitique/geopolitique-du-vendredi-11-mars-2022

Les États-Unis ont d’abord proposé que la Pologne livre à l’Ukraine ses vieux avions de combat de fabrication russe, un héritage de l’ère soviétique, qui seraient immédiatement utilisables par des pilotes ukrainiens déjà formés. La Pologne a initialement refusé, mais s’est révisée en proposant de les donner aux Américains sur une base en Allemagne, libre à Washington de les offrir à l’Ukraine. Cette fois, ce sont les États-Unis qui ont refusé, […]

Mark Lewis sur Twitter : “We have a broken system when the patient sits stone-faced absorbing their cancer prognosis and only breaks down into tears when they ask how much their treatment is going to cost” / Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/marklewismd/status/1499546686519070722

#états-unis #leadership

La mortalité maternelle continue d’augmenter aux Etats-Unis
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2022/02/23/la-mortalite-maternelle-continue-d-augmenter-aux-etats-unis_6114887_3210.htm

Une étude américaine montre que 861 femmes sont mortes en 2020 au cours de leur grossesse ou dans les quarante-deux jours suivants, et que le taux est presque trois fois plus élevé pour les femmes noires que pour les femmes blanches .

(...) le taux de mortalité maternelle aux Etats-Unis a encore augmenté pour atteindre un sommet depuis un demi-siècle.

(...)

Le taux de mortalité maternelle s’est par conséquent élevé à 23,8 décès pour 100 000 naissances. Il s’agit du pire taux parmi les pays industrialisés. (...)

Et la situation américaine n’a cessé d’empirer ces dernières années : le taux était de 20,1 décès pour 100 000 naissances en 2019, et de 17,4 en 2018.

Un fusil semi-automatique destiné aux #enfants crée la controverse aux #États-Unis | La Presse
▻https://www.lapresse.ca/international/etats-unis/2022-02-18/un-fusil-semi-automatique-destine-aux-enfants-cree-la-controverse-aux-etats

https://mobile-img.lpcdn.ca/v2/924x/r3996/cc6191f26ba23af382e9bc8e3de631a4.jpg

C’est « la première de nombreuses #armes qui aideront les adultes à faire découvrir aux enfants le sport de tir en toute sécurité », selon la société WEE1 Tactical, qui salue sur son site internet un fusil « comme l’arme de papa et maman ».

Le JR-15 (pour « Junior ») mesure en effet seulement 80 cm de long et pèse moins d’un kilo. Livré avec des chargeurs de 5 ou 10 cartouches de calibre 22 long rifle, il a été commercialisé à la mi-janvier à un prix de 389 dollars.

Le modèle adulte, l’AR-15, est la version civile d’une arme de type militaire qui a été utilisée dans une série de #tueries, notamment en milieu scolaire, qui ont choqué les États-Unis.

#leadership

Eric Topol sur Twitter : "Example on #CDC guidelines…”
▻https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1481690657169182721
▻https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1479571939785994242/pu/vid/720x1280/CunLVYWVg8AMiLyM.mp4?tag=12

#leadership

How Your 401(k) Is Helping Destroy the Amazon Rainforest
▻https://theintercept.com/2021/11/23/brazil-amazon-deforestation-greenwashing-bonds-investment

https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2021/11/GettyImages-1236332180-crop.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&fit=crop&w=1200&h=800

401(k) — Wikipédia
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/401(k)

Le Plan 401(k), ou 401(k), est un système d’épargne retraite par capitalisation très largement utilisé aux #États-Unis.

#leadership #Amazonie #finances

How Delaware Became the World’s Biggest Offshore Haven for Illicit Wealth
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/19/delaware-illicit-finance-corruption-offshore-wealth-american-kleptocr

https://foreignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/wilmington-delaware-iStock-591434474.jpg?w=1000

The examples are too numerous to count. International criminals and crooked foreign officials, gun smugglers and rhino poachers, human traffickers and inside traders—all of them have taken advantage of Delaware’s friendly corporate environment. And these are just the examples we know about. As one lawyer said in 2017, “It’s not entirely beyond the realms of possibility that ISIS could be operating companies and trust funds domiciled in Delaware.”

#états-unis « #leadership » #gendarme-voleur

How #Facebook and #Google fund global misinformation | MIT Technology Review
▻https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/20/1039076/facebook-google-disinformation-clickbait

https://wp.technologyreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/GettyImages-1313893408-v3.jpg?resize=1200,600

The tech giants are paying millions of dollars to the operators of clickbait pages, bankrolling the deterioration of #information ecosystems around the world.

#putaclic #démocraties #états-unis « #leadership »

Top Court Takes Up Climate Challenge in Pre-Summit Jolt to Biden - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-29/supreme-court-will-hear-bid-to-curb-epa-s-climate-change-powers

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ipRUNzHnBWE8/v1/1200x800.jpg

Limiter l’autorité d’un ministère avec déjà un pouvoir limité au départ.

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to curb greenhouse gases from power plants, agreeing to hear appeals from coal-mining companies and Republican-led states.

The appeals seek to prevent President Joe Biden’s administration from imposing the type of sweeping emissions rules the #EPA tried to put in place when fellow Democrat Barack Obama was president. The Supreme Court put Obama’s Clean Power Plan on hold in February 2016, and it never took effect.

#climat #états-unis et ça revendique à grands cris le #leadership

Higher Ed, We’ve Got a Morale Problem — And a Free T-Shirt Won’t Fix It

Let’s say, hypothetically, that it’s been a difficult start to the fall semester for many of us who work as staff and faculty on college campuses in America.

Perhaps we allowed ourselves the faintest glimmer of hope for better working conditions compared to last year, only to be met by sterile emails enforcing inflexible personnel policies, signs about “masking up” on campus as hoards of unmasked fans descend on football stadiums, and pressures to pantomime normalcy for students when our own lives feel far from normal.

Maybe we have experienced a cruel deja vu, once again juggling hours of Zoom meetings with the needs of our unvaccinated children as the delta variant courses through schools and day care centers. Let’s say we’re not just physically and emotionally depleted, but we question whether our institutions have our best interests at heart. We might wonder if we can still enact our values in higher education, given our employers’ leadership and decision-making.

Hypothetically speaking.

Assuming that some part of the scenario above sounds vaguely familiar, college leaders may be casting about for ways to lift their employees’ spirits. More than a few, it seems, have turned to gimmicks that have little chance of meaningfully moving the dial on morale. That’s because the root of many morale issues in higher education run deep enough that a free T-shirt will feel shallow and even insulting.

Morale can absolutely be improved in higher education, but it requires the type of sustained attention necessary to shift organizational culture. Leaders need to be ready to put in the work, starting with admitting there is a morale problem and actively listening to what staff and faculty are saying.
From Burnout to Demoralization

There was considerable discussion last fall about burnout among college staff and faculty. I wrote about how college leaders should prepare for a wave of burnout as the pandemic brewed a potent blend of constant work and worry. Recently, I’ve seen an increasing number of stories about workers who aren’t just exhausted. They are fed up.

Stories have chronicled boycotts of in-person teaching, protests and die-ins to demand mask and vaccine mandates, faculty senate resolutions, and even faculty members walking away from jobs. I’ve heard from several colleagues at multiple institutions that morale is the lowest they have ever seen. People in higher education are using a new word to describe their experience: “demoralized.”

Doris A. Santoro, a professor at Bowdoin College who wrote a book on teacher demoralization, has explained that teachers of all kinds are facing stressors during the pandemic that put them at heightened risk for burnout and demoralization. But she also draws clear distinctions between the two. Whereas burnout happens when teachers are entirely depleted, demoralization “happens when teachers are consistently thwarted in their ability to enact the values that brought them to the profession.” Anne Helen Peterson and John Warner have also written eloquently about demoralization and how it differs from burnout.

Suffice it to say, demoralization suggests an ethical indictment of organizations, professions and society broadly. We still often talk about burnout (and its solutions) at the individual level, but we refer to demoralization among a group, like workers at a particular company or in an entire profession. In fact, many definitions of “morale” focus on collective sentiments, equating it to esprit de corps. Low morale, like demoralization, means a group is struggling to maintain belief in an institution or goal, especially when times get tough. As such, it provides a stronger push for people thinking about leaving their jobs. If burnout means driving while drowsy, demoralization means seeking the nearest off-ramp.
What Has Changed This Fall?

How did we get from burnout to demoralization in a year? In truth, the delta variant didn’t suddenly trigger demoralization. These issues predate the pandemic and have long co-existed. And, of course, the feeling isn’t universal. But it does seem like wading through another semester of Pandemic University—or, more accurately, through the ways that policymakers and college leaders responded to the pandemic—shattered many people’s fragile defenses. While writing this piece, I received many emails and messages about why morale is low at their institutions or why they left higher education, and a few themes surfaced.

There’s a pervasive frustration that leaders didn’t learn any lessons from last year. It’s almost as if last year didn’t happen at all, or leaders are exercising a sort of selective amnesia about the trauma of the past 18 months. In practice, this manifests in zealously pursuing Normal Fall™ regardless of employees’ concerns and worsening public health indicators. Relatedly, many people feel that leaders simply aren’t listening, aren’t taking questions about fall plans in meetings, or aren’t transparently answering the questions they received. Values-based conflict emerged as staff and faculty sought compassion and thoughtful answers in the face of elevated risk and instead heard: “Everything’s fine!”

Low compensation, of course, was frequently mentioned. A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education included results from a survey showing that 88 percent of respondents believed uncompetitive salaries are a top reason people leave college student affairs jobs. While staff and faculty may have previously tolerated inadequate pay, the equation changed significantly with the addition of excessive work demands and the possibility of serious illness. The fact that many leaders continued to ask employees to work under these conditions without additional compensation felt exploitative.

Another reason for low morale is inadequate staffing. As people have left jobs, institutions have faced vacancies they haven’t been able to fill or fill fast enough. Or they simply haven’t ever hired enough people to do the work well. Sociologists Laura Hamilton and Kelly Nielsen described the pervasive and purposeful under-staffing of institutions in their book “Broke” as the austerity-driven goal of “tolerable suboptimization,” with workers “toiling under exceptionally high workloads with little relief in sight.” For many staff and faculty, the combination of low pay and ballooning workloads reveals institutions care little for employee wellbeing.

Norms within the higher education profession aren’t helping matters. As Margaret Sallee, who recently edited a book on sustainable careers in student affairs, told me, “I’ve been so concerned about the ways that student affairs eats its people up. I think it’s been exacerbated by the pandemic … but, I hate to say it, I think it’s gotten worse in the last three months.” The profession normalizes working long hours to support students, and many senior student affairs leaders “are stuck in a rut of how we used to do things and how we’ve always done things.” Sallee attributes some of the low morale this year to disappointment after it looked like the field may shift away from these “ideal worker” norms: “Instead I just see this knee-jerk reaction to going back to how it was.”

There are also tensions surfacing between different categories of university employees. Some workers have had autonomy to decide what was best for them and their families, while others have not. And some staff, in particular, are tired of having their expertise ignored. That’s what I heard when I spoke to a staff member at a rural community college who asked to not be named to protect their job. “Staff have degrees, they have expertise, they are publishing and doing these things that are just completely ignored by faculty,” the staff member explained. “It’s just really hard to be constantly dismissed.” They likened higher education to a class system: “I don’t have academic freedom. I don’t have any type of protection … I think that has become more apparent with the pandemic, being told who is ‘essential,’ who has to be on campus.”

This staff member and their colleagues have been sending each other job ads: “There are data analyst jobs I could do and easily make double what I’m making.” But what bothers them about staff leaving is the sense that nobody cares. “We see a lot of ‘quit lit’ from faculty. We don’t see it often from staff, mainly because staff just disappear.”
Gimmicks Won’t Get It Done

Just as there were college leaders genuinely worried about burnout, there are leaders who want to do something about low morale. Too frequently, however, the solutions they devise don’t match the magnitude of the problems or initiate the long-term, cultural changes many employees desire.

When I expressed my worry that many college leaders won’t put in the work to address low morale, my Twitter followers filled my mentions with examples of small tokens of appreciation or one-time events. It was clear they found many of these gifts or programs to range from comically unhelpful to infuriating. In no particular order, these examples included: a credit to the performing arts center, tickets to a football game, free ice cream, raffles for gift cards, a coupon to the coffee shop, food trucks, and free hats and T-shirts.

To be clear, I don’t imagine most leaders believe these efforts will fix everything. They know what they have asked of staff and faculty during the pandemic, and they want to recognize that effort. However, they may not fully appreciate how these initiatives can trivialize concerns and have the opposite effect of what they intended.

How Leaders Can Start to Improve Morale

There are some obvious answers to higher education’s morale problem. People want compensation that reflects the realities of their labor and the value they bring to the institution. They also want their departments and units to be properly staffed to meet expectations and serve students well. This last point bears repeating: Students’ success is inextricably linked to staff and faculty working conditions. You don’t get the former without investing in the latter.

It’s true that raises and adding new positions are huge expenses for most institutions, but that doesn’t make them impossible. Just as important, the price tag doesn’t prevent leaders from making a commitment and a plan. Leaders should tell staff and faculty that increasing pay is a priority, even if it takes time to implement, then develop a plan to analyze workload issues across the institution and create a timeline for addressing them. Knowing there is movement toward adequate pay and equitable workloads is more meaningful for many staff and faculty than a dozen thank-you emails.

I’ve heard of a few other low-cost ideas. For example, leaders should think about their communication choices. I suggest they excise “return to normal” from their vocabulary, stop worshipping at the altar of “in-person” instruction and activities, and feel comfortable admitting when morale is low. Josie Ahlquist, an expert on digital leadership in higher education, recently wrote that leaders should give up on messages imbued with “toxic positivity” and consider instead a position of “critical hope.”

I asked her about this in an interview, and she explained: “Leaders in the past could just be performative or hide behind, ‘I’m fundraising, attending big football games, and it’s all good.’ And we haven’t had ‘all good.’ To say ‘everything’s fine’ isn’t being emotionally connected.”

She drew inspiration from professor Jessica Riddell, who wrote that many leaders have leaned on toxic positivity in their responses to the pandemic. By putting on a constantly cheery facade that brooks no dissent, leaders have silenced “candid and uncomfortable conversations.” On the other hand, critical hope acknowledges that we are in the midst of a radical transformation and welcomes complexity and discomfort as cornerstones of a process to reimagine higher education.

Given how many people have told me they feel ignored, I can’t recommend enough the power of giving staff and faculty platforms to speak—and then listening to them. In practice, this means collecting perspectives and questions, then providing complete and transparent responses. It means bringing important campus decisions to shared governance bodies for deliberative discussion, rather than seeking “input” after the decisions have already been made. Ahlquist stressed the value of being accessible, whether it’s blocking off time for anyone in the campus community to meet, doing listening tours, or allowing people to send direct messages via social media. Even small efforts like these can help employees feel seen.

I spoke with Terisa Riley, chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, after learning she asked a student affairs group on Facebook for ideas to improve staff wellbeing. “I’m a real active social listener, which will sometimes drive people crazy,” she explained. Although initially some people were suspicious of her engagement on multiple social media sites, Riley maintains it helps her get to the bottom of frustrations, note complaints, and collaborate with colleagues to find solutions.

Listening isn’t enough to completely prevent departures. “We’ve started to face some of the turnover that we’ve been reading about,” Riley explained. But she is keenly aware that “other industries are much more flexible, they understand that the human being doesn’t divorce the family or responsibilities they have when they walk through the door at 8 a.m.”

She’s a firm believer that higher education needs to do a better job of managing its talent. And that might mean leaders need to give people the ability to individually renegotiate their working conditions. As Riley put it: “If someone is thinking that leaving is their only option, I say, ‘Please don’t let it be. Can we talk through what you personally think you need to be here? I’ll try to help meet your needs, I want to hear from you personally.’ Because I only have 1,000 employees. I can work with all of them if I need to do it.”

Importantly, this approach doesn’t treat workers as expendable. Colleges have a bad track record of operating as if there will be an endless supply of people who want to work at them. I think that’s both factually and ethically wrong—it’s also a terrible approach to attracting and retaining highly-skilled workers, many of whom are, at this very moment, perusing job ads.

The simple truth is that while morale can tank quickly, rebuilding it takes time and sustained energy. And it’s harder still to rebuild as the pandemic continues. But I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t have my own critical hope that the “business as usual” systems and decisions that got us here can be transformed for the better. Save the T-shirts for another day and start building the type of organizational culture that staff and faculty can believe in again.

▻https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-09-27-higher-ed-we-ve-got-a-morale-problem-and-a-free-t-shirt-won-t-fi

#burn-out #démoralisation #enseignement (pas pas que...) #ESR #université #facs #valeurs #moral

ping @_kg_

Quand les mairies sont dirigées par des femmes (au Brésil), quelle conséquences sur la gestion de la #crise_sanitaire ?
Une des conclusions :

We provide evidence that municipalities under female leadership had fewer deaths and hospitalizations per 100 thousand inhabitants and enforced more non-pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., mask usage and prohibition of gatherings). (...) Our findings provide credible causal evidence that female leaders outperformed male ones when dealing with a global policy issue.

Source :

Under Pressure : Women’s Leadership During the COVID-19 Crisis

In this paper, we study the effect of women’s public leadership in times of crisis. More specifically, we use a regression discontinuity design in close mayoral races between male and female candidates to understand the impact of having a woman as a mayor during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. We provide evidence that municipalities under female leadership had fewer deaths and hospitalizations per 100 thousand inhabitants and enforced more non-pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., mask usage and prohibition of gatherings). We also show that these results are not due to measures taken before the pandemic or other observable mayoral characteristics such as education or political preferences. Finally, we provide evidence that these effects are stronger in municipalities where Brazil’s far-right president, who publicly disavowed the importance of non-pharmaceutical interventions, had a higher vote share in the 2018 election. Overall, our findings provide credible causal evidence that female leaders outperformed male ones when dealing with a global policy issue. Moreover, our results also showcase the role local leaders can play in counteracting bad policies implemented by populist leaders at the national level.

▻https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3883010&mc_cid=af0c4948df
#femmes #leadership #covid-19 #coronavirus #gestion_de_crise #maire #femmes_maires #Brésil

U.S. States Toss Thousands Of Vaccine Doses. Could They Be Donated Instead? : Goats and Soda : NPR
▻https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/10/1025463260/alabama-just-tossed-65-000-vaccines-turns-out-its-not-easy-to-donate-unused-dos

https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/08/06/ap21162488620898_wide-15e46edd031bfd192c19ab36a0ffbbbe6d8dc9a0.jpg?s=1400

Persad says another barrier could be the contracts that the Trump administration signed with vaccine makers in which there appears to be some language restricting the use of vaccines abroad — although the contract language isn’t fully public.

#états-unis #leadership

You’ve Visualized Your Data, Now Actualize Your Promotion
▻https://nightingaledvs.com/youve-visualized-your-data-now-actualize-your-promotion

I sat through approximately 160 cross-calibration conversations for analysts in my #Career. A cross-cal is how many companies ensure associates get a fair performance rating..

#communication #Community #Data_Visualization #leadership #skill_development

Old Corner Saloon owner Todd Anderson charged with selling fake coronavirus vaccine cards - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/05/06/fake-covid-vaccine-cards

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/ND4T22E6CII6XMXVPUXQDATVBU.jpg&w=1440#.jpg

#etats-unis #leadership

How the aid sector marginalises women refugees

‘No one understands the issues women from war zones face better than we do ourselves.’

I am a woman, a refugee from Darfur, and the co-founder of an organisation committed to supporting other Sudanese refugee women in Kampala, Uganda. I have heard about the localisation process in humanitarian aid, but I do not feel its effect. What I do feel, and experience on a daily basis, are the numerous ways women – especially refugee women – are discriminated against in the humanitarian system.

My experiences have taught me that, wherever we go, women need to stand up for ourselves and take #leadership because no one understands the issues women from war zones face better than we do ourselves.

When I was 12 years old my family fled to Kalma camp, the largest camp for displaced people in Darfur, home to more than 120,000 people. The war and insecurity were reason enough for me to leave my country, but when I was 16 I started being a human rights activist and helping women who had been raped.

My work at the time consisted of writing down the details of what happened to the women who came to Kalma from villages to escape fighting and violence – mostly mothers and young girls. It made me a target because talking about rape was taboo, and recording the women’s stories was evidence of the crimes being committed in the war.

When I finished high school I decided to leave. I wanted to go to university, but people like me were not safe in Sudan. The government attacked women’s rights activists in universities and in their homes, and sometimes kidnapped them. I was scared and wanted a future, so I left.

I spent one year in South Sudan, where I continued my work with women, before arriving in 2012 in Kampala, where I registered as a refugee and attended university, earning a degree in International Relations and Diplomatic Studies.

The issues we face

Sudanese women are often in a difficult situation when they arrive in Kampala. Many are alone with their children. Most don’t speak English – the language you need to start building a life here. Their husbands are either dead, in prison, or missing. The women struggle to find work and struggle to feed their children. The ones who live with their husbands often experience domestic abuse when the men lash out because of financial stress.

Many women have also been subjected to circumcision. They want to go to the hospital to receive medical care, but they do not know where to go, and fear judgement from the Sudanese community.

A Sudanese woman will never speak about her rape to a man. She will never tell a man that she is having difficulties giving birth because of circumcision or that her husband treats her badly. She will never speak to a man about early marriage or young girls getting married to older men.

These topics are considered shameful and taboo. Men commit many of the acts women suffer from, and women are afraid that they will be further victimised if they speak up. If a woman tells a man she is being beaten by her husband, the man will often ask the husband if it is true and the husband will only beat his wife more. Many Sudanese men will say these issues should be solved within the family and discourage women from seeking outside support.

At the same time, Sudanese women also struggle to talk about these topics with Ugandan and Western aid workers who come from different cultures and speak different languages. But they will talk about them with other women from their own community, women who understand their experiences and speak their language.
Representing and helping ourselves

This is why refugee-led organisations like the one that I founded with fellow Sudanese refugee women are so important. We know the needs of Sudanese people. We can offer support on sensitive and intimate issues in ways that other organisations cannot, and we can act as a bridge to international humanitarian organisations to make sure people in our community are receiving food, healthcare, and the other essential support they need.

Unfortunately, however, the humanitarian system is replicating the inequalities we face in our private lives. As a Sudanese woman leading an organisation, I feel like I am being left behind and marginalised, not because I want to be, but because the humanitarian system doesn’t recognise the additional barriers I face and the responsibilities I carry in my daily life.

In Sudanese society, women are expected to get married, have children, take care of the home and take a secondary role to men. We have to fight for opportunities to have a role outside of the house and to be in leadership positions. We need to get paid for the humanitarian work we do in order to make it sustainable.

Most international humanitarian organisations offer voluntary positions to women like me, even if we do as much work as people who are given a salary. Some organisations offer allowances of around $150 per month as compensation to volunteers. That is not enough to even pay rent, let alone feed our children or cover healthcare and education expenses.

The Grand Bargain was supposed to change this, but in my experience it hasn’t. Instead of focusing full time on humanitarian work, I had to open a bakery to earn money to support myself and my family.

If we get paid for our humanitarian work, we will be able to increase the time we dedicate to it and take more control over our own lives. There is a saying in Arabic: “He who does not own his own fuel does not own his own decisions.”

Having funding to open a nursery at our organisation would also be a good starting place to allow us to increase our working hours and an important recognition of the multiple responsibilities we have as women.

International humanitarian organisations should dedicate a specific percentage of funding to build the capacity of refugee women-led organisations to help these basic goals become a reality.

Instead, donors expect women refugee-led organisations to compete for the same grants male-led organisations apply for and report on them on the same schedule. This is not feasible. Men have women taking care of their children, cooking their meals, and cleaning their houses while they are working. Women are doing both.

Even me, I am currently pregnant with my third child. When I give birth, I will need to stay close to my baby for at least the first three months to feed and care for them. I won’t be able to leave my child to put in an eight-hour work day. I will need more time to complete the work I usually do, and I will need donors to understand this and adjust accordingly.

But the humanitarian sector does not make any accommodations for the realities we face as refugee women. As a result, it is difficult for women refugee-led organisations to reach the same level as organisations led by men. This means that we are often denied a seat at the table to talk about the situations we face and to propose solutions.

Without being able to raise these issues ourselves, no one will fight for us because men cannot imagine what we experience. If the humanitarian sector truly wants to address our needs, it is time to address the structural inequalities in the sector that prevent refugee women from leading for ourselves.

▻https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/first-person/2021/3/15/How-the-aid-sector-marginalises-women-refugees

#femmes #femmes_réfugiées #marginalisation #humanitaire #inégalités #inégalités_structurelles #réfugiés

ping @_kg_ @karine4

Adam Tooze sur Twitter : “US banks have by far the largest outstanding volume of fossil fuel loans.” / Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/1374798168890634240

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExPYD8IWUAIE8Ez?format=jpg&name=medium#.jpg

#banques #états-unis #crédits #énergies_fossiles #hydrocarbures #co2 #climat #leadership

We Must Fix US Health and Public Health Policy | AJPH | Vol. 111 Issue 4
▻http://ajph.aphapublications.org

Despite a history of public health progress and the most expensive health care system in the world, the United States failed in its initial response to COVID-19. Much of this failure resulted from a presidential administration that sidelined, undermined, and maligned public health. But the roots of failure are deeper . Recovering from the pandemic and building health and public health back better will require recognizing the roots of failure and working persistently to achieve the progress that the country needs—especially among the most underserved communities. This must begin with recognizing the shortcomings in the US health system response to the pandemic, but the multiple overlapping failures laid bare by this crisis demonstrate the need for a systemic, multifaceted, sustained approach to reform that goes beyond pandemic preparedness.

Over the past 40 years, the United States has gone from having a life expectancy near the average for upper-income countries and average per capita health care costs to being a negative outlier [...]

#états-unis #santé_publique #espérance_de_vie #leadership

Vaccine Disparity Hits Home For Many Foreign-Born Doctors : NPR
▻https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/973791968/vaccine-disparity-hits-home-for-many-foreign-born-doctors

https://media.npr.org/include/images/facebook-default-wide.jpg?s=1400

Many U.S. doctors have received their COVID-19 vaccines, but nearly a third are foreign-born with family in countries facing no access to it — a disparity that troubles many as they fight the virus.

#états-unis #leadership #discrimination

Thousands of #Covid-19 vaccines wind up in the garbage because of fed, state guidelines
▻https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/thousands-covid-19-vaccines-wind-garbage-because-fed-state-guidelines-n1254

A hospital Covid-19 vaccination team shows up at the emergency room to inoculate employees who haven’t received their shots.

Finding just a few, the team is about to leave when an ER doctor suggests they give the remaining doses to vulnerable patients or nonhospital employees. The team refuses, saying that would violate hospital policy and state guidelines.

Incensed, the doctor works his way up the hospital chain of command until he finds an administrator who gives the OK for the team to use up the rest of the doses.

But by the time the doctor tracks down the medical team, its shift is over and, following protocol, whatever doses remained are now in the garbage.

Isolated incident? Not a chance, Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told NBC News.

#absurdités #états-unis #leadership

Dr. Tom Frieden sur Twitter : “10 months into the pandemic, and the US still hasn’t produced enough N95 masks—which are more protective than surgical masks—for health workers or the public. Given spread of the new #Covid variant, better masks may be especially important.” / Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/DrTomFrieden/status/1346563130059534337

#millier_de_milliards #leadership #états-unis