Women's Issues

This is nothing shot of human trafficking.

Arranged marriages, mail order brides, and child brides are a rather despicable practice, the cross border nature of many of these problems and their resemblance to human trafficking means that for once, I think the UN probably would be the best agency to regulate this. Preferably with lots of coordination from Interpol.

Interpol would certainly work in most of the countries where these girl's are bought (if by someone outside their country). But could Interpol work inside a country? How many agencies could do that?

For Africa I would love to see the African Union do it.

Interpol is mostly there to coordinate, they don't have any actual jurisdiction or arresting authority anywhere. Their role is essentially gathering information on cases from multiple countries on crime that spans multiple countries, and making sure proper information flow and cooperation is being facilitated between those countries.

A police officer in, say, Singapore, may know many of the details of a human trafficking operation being ran in his country, but he may be lacking the details of what goes on when the people are trafficked out of the country, which would contain valuable information relevant to shutting down the operation. If the destination is the US, there may be a case running involving the receiving end of the operation and how to shut it down. Interpol's job is to take things like that and facilitate joint intelligence sharing and operational planning across borders between Law Enforcement in the different countries.

So essentially, they are there to share information between police forces in different countries and keep tabs on what is going on, since the language barrier can often be a problem for establishing cooperation, and one country involved in a cross-border criminal case might not know what to ask another country for, or if a sensitive development has occurred.

So unfortunately, for an operation to occur in Africa, you would need competent and not-corrupt African Police available to benefit from cross-border information to shut down an operation. The African Union could try to establish their own more localized interpol, but to actually take action and have jurisdiction inside a country, that country would have to sign a charter agreeing to that. Many countries would refuse to do such a thing.

edited 17th Mar '13 10:52:06 PM by Barkey

Oh, that's pretty cool! Thanks for that explination! Yes, that would be very useful. We've just got to get the local police in the area invested as well or equipted to handle it.

One issue that will eventually(and already does) present itself is that if the local police are corrupt, Interpol can't effectively do anything to help. They can negotiate with the government itself, but if the government is corrupt, then effectively nothing can be done to address the problem. Unfortunately, because of the nature of most of these operations, the women are very often taken from countries that have corrupt governments and corrupt police.

Which essentially means the only thing that can effectively be done is a band-aid approach, slicing off the limbs when they grow from the tree by finding out where the women are being trafficked to, and if it's a country that will play ball, shutting down the receiving end of the operation. It'll slow things down, but in the end it's only temporary and means they just have to find a new safe port of call, which they will eventually. If we had mostly reliable law enforcement in every African Country, Interpol could do a great deal to coordinate and assist African countries in actually destroying human trafficking operations across African borders instead of helping treat the symptoms.

And from what I know about Interpol's role in things, most of it's human trafficking focuses on a few specific asian countries who play ball, such as Singapore, and then the rest is on combating Eastern European trafficking.

edited 17th Mar '13 11:04:48 PM by Barkey

Places like Pakistan, parts of India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh are practically hostages of their own sucked up governments. Then we have problems like Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sierra Leon where there is either no working government or what official capacity they do have is very weak. That's where either UN or AU or Arab League troops need to step in.

For places like Jordan and Morocco, places that should know better, there should be trials and if not in their country the international courts for slavery.

North Dakota's legislature has passed a Personhood Amendment bill. Some news outlets are reporting it to goes to the Governor for a veto or signature, but this is wrong: It's a constitutional amendment, it's going to the voters.

Shit, again?

I wish that I was surprised, but I am not.

With the war on women's health, the next step is to attack female victims, of any disposition.

These "boys" need to be in jail as well as any who knew about it and hushed it up.

Urgh. I don't get why any sport should be a Get Out of Jail Free card. I understand the phenomenon... but, I don't grok it. <_<

edited 23rd Mar '13 5:12:06 AM by Euodiachloris

Welcome to high school in a small town. These boys are heroes to their community.

Feh! Just turn the whole town into a prison camp, already - especially if we want to do women's rights a favor in general... It's just a shame that the actually innocent who wanted nothing to do with this would have to go as well, just for knowing about the whole thing if anyone with the power to do so ever wanted to teach a lesson that badly...

edited 23rd Mar '13 5:06:25 PM by TheShopSoldier

@re: North Dakota.

These laws are doom to fail aren't they? No matter how much local support they get federal law means they can't do jack doesn't it?

Good - I'm sick of these potential rapists in power thinking they can legislate women's rights away as if God told them to... Let them and their time wasting BS toward this nation burn!

I was asking not telling >_<

It will take a lot of money and lawsuits to get these laws declared unconstitutional. But technically, it's law until a court strikes it down.

Sorry, wrong thread.

edited 24th Mar '13 11:32:33 AM by Carciofus

So like with prop 8 they could actually ban it and they could be a good three or five years until the Supreme Court comes along to say 'cut this shit out', if at all?

Well isn't that just magic?

The first step would be the Arkansas Appellate courts. Then if needed, the Arkansas Supreme Court.

If they push past the Arkansas Supreme Court then it hits the federal circuit.

While we're on the subject of reproductive rights I would like to rises the issue of tubal ligation.

Basically it is practically impossible to find a doctor who will agree to sterilise you before you're 35 or popped out your required 2.5 kids. Many women find this refusal represents a paternalistic and sexist stance against women as a group and their right to control their bodies.

Personally I disagree. People do typically change their minds about children and a doctor has a responsibility to refuse an irreversible surgery if they believe the patient's request is not in their best interests. But it seems worth talking about.

edited 1st Apr '13 7:19:08 PM by joeyjojo

Really? I didn't realise it was difficult to get a tubal ligation.

I disagree with you on that last bit. Regarding 'Not being in the patient's interest', surely when it comes to the choice to have children, the patient knows their 'best interests' better than the doctor does?

I could see situations where a doctor may feel like it's not in the patient's best interest to perform an irreversible procedure (eg, someone else is pressuring them into it). I don't think that's usually how it goes, but I could see it happening.

In general, I'd be okay with a short waiting period for sterilization, so long as there's no pressing need to have it done ASAP, much like some states have a 48 hour waiting period before you can get a tattoo. It is a (more or less) permanent procedure, that should have some thought put into it.

However, the trick would be making sure it doesn't cross the line from "sleep on it and get back to me in the morning" into "obstruction because we don't approve".

I was refused my tubes being tied. The doctor was absolutely condescending about it. (The doctor was a woman too.)

It's a doctor's duty to advise their patients, but they also must do what their patient wishes. Let them sign all the waivers in the world but give them what they want.

I personally am exhausted of this emphasis on having children, let alone more than one. I have people, strangers and family alike, seriously dumbfounded because I don't want more or my boyfriend and I don't want "one of our own". I am also weary of hearing people criticise people who don't want children at all as selfish. There is nothing wrong with not having kids, especially in our over populated world. Never mind all the studies and logic that shows how only children are far more successful than multiples.

If a doctor is worried about doing a surgery that has permanent results because they feel their patient could regret it later, then I don't really see anything wrong with the doctor refusing the surgery.

If I were a doctor, I'd want to know my patient well before doing that sort of surgery (or any surgery, really). And I personally wouldn't want to perform it on someone in their early 20's, because what you want when you're 20 and what you want when you're 30 can be very, very different things.

Basically, I think some doctors are sexist. But I also think some doctors just don't feel comfortable removing body parts from young people, when they can't be replaced if they later decide that they want a kid.