THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

Trafficking - the selling of women and children for monetary profit, most often leading to bonded prostitution - is one of the most visible topics in South Asia. The media is saturated with stories of women and children sold into sex slavery, where they are deprived of their most basic human rights. Social movements in the sub-continent are now actively working with this issue. The debates, however, still see no clear-cut division between trafficking and prostitution. As the phenomenon of large numbers of women working as sex workers in urban areas continues to increase, this issue must be taken beyond the discourses of trafficking to include larger issues of the economics of migration and labor and the difference between forced and voluntary prostitution. For our first discussion on Bol!, we have invited Meena Poudel, the Programme Coordinator of Oxfam Nepal and a longtime activist, to discuss what the South Asian activist networks have been doing on the issue. ...

Sushma Joshi August 15, 1998, The Kathmandu Post, republished in the Nepal Digest As the lights of Bombay flashes by the windows of the taxi, the man behind me inquires: What conference are you attending? I try to conceptualize an answer that will be comprehensible to him. I am going to the Eight National Conference of Women's Studies in Pune, I say. I see him struggling with this new concept: a young woman involved in the workforce in a way that he cannot envision. A young South Asian woman travelling alone to attend a conference. And what does this conference discuss, he asks politely. You talk about women's status? Empowerment? Well, it's a little bit more complex than that, I answer. We are going to be talking about issues of livelihood, ecology, representations, Structural Adjustment Policies, the New Liberal Economic Policy. "Oh, you mean Enron." He says, his friendly demeanour changing to hostility. "Those feminists stopped the Enron project...

For more on the debate on Depo-provera, check out: http://groups.msn.com/DepoProveraUsers/depoproverapetition.msnw World Population Day, Womens' Bodies and My Friend Sangini July 12, 1998, Kathmandu Post Sushma Joshi A man is holding a large needle and seems to be stabbing it into the figure of a woman. Below, there is a larger depiction of a hypodermic syringe. The large red letters say simply: The three month needle. There is no other information on these large advertisements that have started appearing in strategic places around Kathmandu, like bus-stops and pharmaceutical shops. The billboards are advertisements for a synthetic hormonal contraceptive to control fertility - female fertility. No alternatives to Depo-provera (we assume that this is what the advertisements are referring to) are given. Side-effects, of which there could be many, are not mentioned. No information is given about conditions like diabetics and previous jaundice cases that could make it unsafe f...