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table of contents - home page - text-only home page Women briefly European Union Considers Ban on Aid to States that Allow Female Circumcision In November 2000 Anna Diamantopoulou, the European Union's Greek commissioner for employment and social affairs, condemned the practice of female circumcision in a speech before the European Parliament. She warned that those countries refusing to ban the practice which she called "an appalling violation of fundamental human rights," could be stripped of their right to receive EU development aid. Female circumcision is practiced in 28 African countries, putting at least two million girls a year at risk of genital mutilation, sterility, disability and death. The EU and the UN estimate that some 135 million women have been circumcised. Some UN specialists believe that gradual reduction is being achieved by legal action. Recently the practice has been outlawed in Senegal, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Togo, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Egypt. Diamantopoulou also called upon EU member states to outlaw it within their immigrant communities-so far only Britain, Norway and Sweden have done so. Details can be read online in a Guardian newspaper article of November 30 by Andrew Osborn: www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4098361,00.html No Room for Abused Disabled Women in U.S. Shelters Very few of the estimated 2000 shelters for women in danger in the USA are accessible, according to recent data released by the Center for Research for Women with Disabilities (CROWD), based at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. This remains the case even though research regularly shows that disabled women are more likely to be abused than non-disabled women according to a February 20 Associated Press story by George Watson. The article points out that the situation is systemic: police have not been trained to identify or interview disabled victims; prosecutors, fearful that disabled women will not make good witnesses, hesitate to go forward with legal cases; shelters are usually on paltry budgets that make adaptations difficult; and women with disabilities often have fewer options of escape, fewer opportunities to search out authorities and greater fears of reporting abuse. Some indications of change include: Congress has recently reauthorized the $3 billion Violence against Women Act, setting aside about $12 million annually for the next five years to provide disability-related training to law enforcement and social service providers; Barrier Free Living in Brooklyn is participating in a program to teach New York Police Department staff on how to identify and interview disabled abuse victims, and hope to build a shelter specifically for disabled victims. Details on the web: CROWD public.bcm.tmc.edu; Justice Department www.usdoj.gov; and Barrier Free Living www.barrrierfreeliving.org New U.K. & U.S. Books on Women And Girls with Disabilities in Literature We will review these in a subsequent issue of Disablity World, but for now, just to let you know what has been published recently:
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