‘Dying every two hours’: Afghan women risk life to give birth

‘Dying every two hours’: Afghan women risk life to give birth
In this photograph taken on December 8, 2023, Afghan women sit beside their newborns at the Doctors Without Borders (MSF)-run maternity hospital in Khost, Afghanistan. (AFP/File)
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Updated 21 December 2023
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‘Dying every two hours’: Afghan women risk life to give birth

‘Dying every two hours’: Afghan women risk life to give birth
  • Afghanistan is among the worst countries in the world for deaths in childbirth, UN says
  • 638 women die in Afghanistan for every 100,000 viable births compared to 19 in US

KHOST, Afghanistan: Zubaida traveled from the rural outskirts of Khost in eastern Afghanistan to give birth at a maternity hospital specializing in complicated cases, fearing a fate all too common among pregnant Afghan women — her death or her child’s. 

She lay dazed, surrounded by the unfamiliar bustle of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF)-run hospital, exhausted from delivery the day before, but relieved. 

Her still-weak newborn slept nearby in an iron crib with peeling paint, the child’s eyes lined with khol to ward off evil. 

“If I had given birth at home, there could have been complications for the baby and for me,” said the woman, who doesn’t know her age. 

Not all of the women who make it to the hospital are so lucky. 

“Sometimes we receive patients who come too late to save their lives” after delivering at home, said Therese Tuyisabingere, the head of midwifery at MSF in Khost, capital of Khost province. 

The facility delivers 20,000 babies a year, nearly half those born in the province, and it only takes on high-risk and complicated pregnancies, many involving mothers who haven’t had any check-ups. 

“This is a big challenge for us to save lives,” said Tuyisabingere. 




In this photograph taken on December 8, 2023, an Afghan woman holds the hand of her newborn child at the Doctors Without Borders (MSF)-run maternity hospital in Khost, Afghanistan. (AFP)

She and the some 100 midwives at the clinic are on the front lines of a battle to reduce the maternal mortality rate in Afghanistan, where having many children is a source of pride, but where every birth carries heavy risks — with odds against women mounting. 

Afghanistan is among the worst countries in the world for deaths in childbirth, “with one woman dying every two hours,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said earlier this month. 

The Afghan health ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story. 

According to the latest World Health Organization figures, from 2017, 638 women die in Afghanistan for every 100,000 viable births, compared with 19 in the United States. 

That figure, moreover, conceals the huge disparities between rural and urban areas. 

Terje Watterdal, country director for the non-profit Norwegian Afghanistan Committee (NAC), said they saw 5,000 maternal deaths per 100,000 births in remote parts of Afghanistan. 

“Men carry the women over their shoulders, and the women die over the mountain trying to reach a hospital,” he said. 

Before the return to power of the Taliban in August 2021 and the end of their insurgency, women would sometimes have to brave the frontlines to reach help, but now there are new challenges — including a “brain drain” of expertise. 

“A lot of gynaecologists have left the country,” Watterdal said. 




In this photograph taken on December 8, 2023, Afghan women sit beside their newborns at the Doctors Without Borders (MSF)-run maternity hospital in Khost, Afghanistan. (AFP)

Moreover, Taliban authorities want to get rid of the mobile medical teams visiting women because “they cannot control the health messages they were giving,” he said. 

Under the Taliban government, women have been squeezed from public life and had access to education restricted, threatening the future of the female medical field in a country where many families avoid sending women to male doctors. 

“Access to antenatal and postnatal care for a woman was (always) extremely complicated. It’s even more complicated today,” said Filipe Ribeiro, MSF director in Afghanistan. 

This is due to measures taken by authorities as well as the failings of the health care system — including structural support from foreign donors. 

“What little there was has been put under even greater pressure,” Ribeiro said. 

The financial strain on families amid the country’s economic crisis increases the risks, said Noor Khanum Ahmadzai, health coordinator for non-governmental organization Terre des Hommes in Kabul. 

In a public hospital where the midwives are overworked and poorly paid, women have to bring their own medicine. 

A delivery costs around 2,000 Afghanis ($29) — a significant sum for many families. 

Despite the risks, “women who used to go to the public sector now prefer to deliver at home, because they don’t have money,” said Ahmadzai. 

An estimated 40 percent of Afghan women give birth at home, but that shoots up to 80 percent in remote areas — often with the help of their mother-in-law or a local matriarch, but sometimes alone. 

Islam Bibi, pregnant with triplets, went to the MSF facility in Khost in pain, and empty-handed. 

“I was sick, my husband didn’t have any money. I was told, ‘Go to this hospital, they do everything for free’,” said the 38-year-old, one of hundreds of thousands of Afghans who fled Pakistan in recent months, fearing deportation. 

Multiple births like Islam Bibi’s are common, said Tania Allekotte, an MSF gynaecologist from Argentina. 

“It is valued here to have many children and many women take a treatment to stimulate their fecundity. We often have twins here,” she told AFP. 

The average woman has six children in Afghanistan, but multiple pregnancies, repeated caesarean sections or miscarriages increase the risk of death. 

There are some rays of hope. 

Women in neighboring Paktia province may have fewer risks now, thanks to a first-of-its-kind maternity center opened recently by NAC in the small provincial capital Gardez — a clinic run by women for women. 

“This type of clinic doesn’t exist in the majority of provinces,” Khair Mohammad Mansoor, the Taliban-appointed provincial health director, told the all-male audience. 

“We have created a system for them in which sharia law and all medical principles will be observed.” 

The NAC facility aims to help “many of our sisters who live in isolated areas,” manager Nasrin Oryakhil said, with similar clinics planned for four other provinces in the coming months. 

Its walls freshly painted and decorated with posters promoting vitamins and iron for pregnant women, the small clinic is set up for 10 deliveries a day, said head midwife Momina Kohistani. 

Keeping mothers alive as they bring new life into the world is close to home for her. 

“My mother died in childbirth,” she murmured, tears rolling down her cheeks. 


Protesters clash with police in Georgia over government’s EU application delay

Protesters clash with police in Georgia over government’s EU application delay
Updated 29 November 2024
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Protesters clash with police in Georgia over government’s EU application delay

Protesters clash with police in Georgia over government’s EU application delay
  • Government suspends EU accession talks until 2028
  • Georgian Dream has deepened ties with Russia amid EU tensions

TBILISI: Police clashed with protesters in the Georgian capital Tbilisi early on Friday, after the country’s ruling party said the government would suspend talks on European Union accession and refuse budgetary grants until 2028.
The country’s interior ministry said three police officers were injured.
Police ordered protesters to disperse, fired water cannon and deployed pepper spray and tear gas as masked young people tried to smash their way into the parliament. Some protesters tossed fireworks at police while shouting “Russians” and “Slaves!“
Georgia’s relations with the EU have deteriorated sharply in recent months as Brussels has alleged that the government had resorted to authoritarian measures and adopted pro-Russian stands.
Thousands of pro-EU protesters had blocked streets in the capital before the altercations began. The country’s figurehead president accused the government of declaring “war” on its own people and confronted riot police, asking whether they served Georgia or Russia.
The Georgian Dream governing bloc accused the EU of “a cascade of insults,” saying in a statement it was using the prospect of accession talks to “blackmail” the country, and to “organize a revolution in the country.”
As a result, it said: “We have decided not to put the issue of opening negotiations with the European Union on the agenda until the end of 2028. Also, we refuse any budgetary grant from the European Union until the end of 2028.”
The South Caucasus country of 3.7 million has the aim of EU accession written into its constitution and has long been among the most pro-Western of the Soviet Union’s successor states.
With months of downturn in relations between Tbilisi and Brussels, the EU had already said that Georgia’s application for membership was frozen.
Georgian Dream says it is not pro-Russian, and that it is committed to democracy and integration with the West.
It says it still wants to join the EU eventually, but has repeatedly engaged in diplomatic feuds with Brussels in recent years, whilst deepening ties with neighboring Russia.
There was no immediate formal comment from the EU on Georgian Dream’s statement. But an EU official said the impact of Thursday’s move was huge, adding the government was doing what the EU had feared and had hoped it would not.
Opinion polls show that around 80 percent of Georgians support EU membership, and the bloc’s flag flies alongside the national flag outside virtually all government buildings in the country.
The pro-Western opposition reacted to Georgian Dream’s announcement with fury as protesters massed. Local media reported that protests that erupted in provincial cities.

’WAR’ AGAINST PEOPLE
Giorgi Vashadze, a prominent opposition leader, wrote on Facebook: “the self-proclaimed, illegitimate government has already legally signed the betrayal of Georgia and the Georgian people.”
President Salome Zourabichvili, a pro-EU critic of Georgian Dream whose powers are mostly ceremonial, said the ruling party had “declared not peace, but war against its own people, its past and future.”
Zourabichvili’s term ends in December, and Georgian Dream has nominated a former lawmaker with hard-line anti-Western views to replace her.
The opposition says that an October election, in which official results gave the Georgian Dream bloc almost 54 percent of the vote, was fraudulent and have refused to take their seats. Western countries demand a probe into irregularities.
Both Georgian Dream and the country’s election commission say the election was free and fair.
Earlier on Thursday, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told journalists that EU membership might harm Georgia’s economy, as it would require Tbilisi to cancel visa-free agreements and trade deals with other countries.
The EU gave Georgia candidate status in December 2023, but has said that a raft of laws passed since by Georgian Dream, including curbs on “foreign agents” and LGBT rights, are authoritarian, Russian-inspired, and obstacles to EU membership.
Foreign and domestic critics of Georgian Dream say the party, which is seen as dominated by its billionaire founder, ex-prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, is steering Georgia back toward Moscow, from which it gained independence in 1991.
Russia and Georgia have had no formal diplomatic relations since Moscow won a brief 2008 war, but have had a limited rapprochement recently.
Opinion polls show most Georgians dislike Russia, which continues to back two breakaway Georgian regions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking during a visit to Kazakhstan, praised the “courage and character” he said Georgian authorities had shown in passing the law on foreign agents, which domestic critics have likened to Russian legislation. (Reporting by Felix Light Additional reporting by Lili Bayer in Brussels Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Andrew Osborn, William Maclean, Frances Kerry and Ron Popeski)


Russian air defenses destroy, down 30 Ukrainian drones in Rostov region

Russian air defenses destroy, down 30 Ukrainian drones in Rostov region
Updated 29 November 2024
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Russian air defenses destroy, down 30 Ukrainian drones in Rostov region

Russian air defenses destroy, down 30 Ukrainian drones in Rostov region

Russian air defenses destroyed or downed 30 Ukrainian drones in southern Rostov region early on Friday, Regional Governor Yuri Slyusar said.
Slyusar, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said some private homes in two villages had sustained some damage, but there were no casualties.


For the first time, Macron calls 1944 killings of West African troops by French army as massacre

For the first time, Macron calls 1944 killings of West African troops by French army as massacre
Updated 29 November 2024
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For the first time, Macron calls 1944 killings of West African troops by French army as massacre

For the first time, Macron calls 1944 killings of West African troops by French army as massacre
  • Up to 400 West African soldiers who fought for the French Army in the Battle of France in 1940 were massacred on Dec. 1, 1944 by French soldiers over a dispute on unpaid wages
  • Macron recognized the criminal act in a letter to Senegal's President Faye, at a time when France’s influence is declining in the region, with Paris losing its sway in the former French colonies in West Africa

DAKAR, Senegal: French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday for the first time recognized the killing of West African soldiers by the French Army in 1944 as a massacre in a letter addressed to the Senegalese authorities.
Macron’s move, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the World War II killings in Thiaroye — a fishing village on the outskirts of the Senegalese capital of Dakar — comes as France’s influence is declining in the region, with Paris losing its sway in the former French colonies in West Africa.
Between 35 and 400 West African soldiers who fought for the French Army in the Battle of France in 1940 were killed on Dec. 1, 1944 by French soldiers after what the French described as a mutiny over unpaid wages.
The West Africans were members of the unit called Tirailleurs Senegalais, a corps of colonial infantry in the French Army. According to historians, there were disputes over unpaid wages in the days before the massacre but on that Dec. 1, French troops rounded up the West African soldiers, mostly unarmed, and shot and killed them.
Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye said he received the letter, which was seen by The Associated Pres.
Speaking to reporters late on Thursday, Faye said Macron’s step should “open the door” so that the “whole truth about this painful event of Thiaroye” can finally come out.
“We have long sought closure on this story and we believe that, this time, France’s commitment will be full, frank and collaborative,” he added.
“France must recognize that on that day, the confrontation between soldiers and riflemen who demanded their full legitimate wages be paid, triggered a chain of events that resulted in a massacre,” read Macron’s letter.
“It is also important to establish, as far as possible, the causes and facts that led to this tragedy,” Macron added. “I have asked my services to inform me of the progress of the work of the Committee for the Restoration of the Facts, which your government has decided to set up, under the direction of Professor Mamadou Diouf, whose eminence and qualities are recognized by all.”
The letter comes weeks after the Senegalese legislative elections, in which the ruling party PASTEF secured a definite majority. The win granted newly elected President Faye a clear mandate to carry out ambitious reforms promised during the campaign, which include more economic independence from foreign companies, including French ones, which are heavily invested in the country.
France still has around 350 troops in its former colony, mainly in a supportive role. Asked about the presence of French forces, Faye alluded that it would not be something the Senegalese would want.
“Historically, France enslaved, colonized and stayed here,” he said. “Obviously, I think that when you reverse the roles a little, you will have a hard time conceiving that another army, China, Russia, Senegal, or any other country could have a military base in France.”
 


ICC’s decisions must be respected, EU’s Borrell says

ICC’s decisions must be respected, EU’s Borrell says
Updated 29 November 2024
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ICC’s decisions must be respected, EU’s Borrell says

ICC’s decisions must be respected, EU’s Borrell says
  • Josep Borrell: “They’re not political. It’s a legal body formed by respected people who are the best among the profession of judges.”

BRUSSEL: Outgoing EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has called on all EU member states to respect decisions by the International Criminal Court, including the arrest warrant against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We cannot undermine the International Criminal Court. It is the only way of having global justice,” Borrell, whose term as the EU’s top diplomat ends this month, said in Brussels.
“They’re not political. It’s a legal body formed by respected people who are the best among the profession of judges.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last week for Netanyahu, his former defense chief Yoav Gallant, and a Hamas leader for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
Though all EU member states are signatories to the ICC’s founding treaty, France said on Wednesday it believed Netanyahu had immunity to actions by the ICC, given Israel has not signed up to the court statutes.
Italy has said it is not feasible to arrest Netanyahu as long as he remains head of Israel’s government.
ICC judges said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution, and starvation as a weapon of war as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza.”
Israel, which launched its offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, has said it will appeal against the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.
Asked if France would arrest Netanyahu if he stepped on French territory, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot did not give a specific answer in an interview with Franceinfo radio.
He said France “is very committed to international justice and will apply international law based on its obligations to cooperate with the ICC.”
But he added that the court’s statute “deals with questions of immunity for certain leaders.”
“It is ultimately up to the judicial authorities to decide,” he added.
Unconfirmed media reports have said that Netanyahu angrily raised the issue in telephone talks with President Emmanuel Macron and urged Paris not to enforce the decision. France has been instrumental in efforts to end fighting in the Middle East and, with the US helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.
Article 27 of the Rome Statute — the foundation of the ICC — states that immunity “shall not bar the Court from exercising its jurisdiction over such a person.”
However, Article 98 says a state cannot “act inconsistently with its obligations under international law concerning the ... diplomatic immunity of a person.”
France’s stance on potential immunity for Netanyahu prompted some strong reactions at home and abroad. Amnesty International called the French stance “deeply problematic,” saying it ran counter to the government’s obligations as an ICC member.
“Rather than inferring that ICC indictees may enjoy immunity, France should expressly confirm its acceptance of the unequivocal legal duty under the Rome Statute to carry out arrest warrants,” said Anne Savinel Barras, president of Amnesty International France.
French Green party boss Marine Tondelier, calling the government’s stance “shameful,” said it was probably the result of an agreement between the French and Israeli leaders.


Somali leaders face reciprocal arrest warrants over disputed regional election

Somali leaders face reciprocal arrest warrants over disputed regional election
Updated 28 November 2024
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Somali leaders face reciprocal arrest warrants over disputed regional election

Somali leaders face reciprocal arrest warrants over disputed regional election

MOGADISHU: Somalia’s federal government and the country’s Jubbaland region have issued reciprocal arrest warrants for their respective leaders in an escalating dispute over the conduct of elections in Jubbaland.
Jubbaland, which borders Kenya and Ethiopia and is one of Somalia’s five semi-autonomous states, reelected regional president Ahmed Mohamed Islam Madobe for a third term in elections on Monday.
However, the national government based in Mogadishu, led by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, opposed the election, saying it was held without federal involvement. Jubbaland’s Attorney General issued an arrest warrant for Mohamud late on Wednesday via the First Instance Court in Kismayo, accusing him of treason, inciting a civil war, and organizing an armed uprising to disrupt the constitutional order in the country.
It did not provide evidence supporting the accusations.
This warrant was in response to a similar one issued by a regional court in Mogadishu for Madobe’s arrest, which accused him of treason and revealing classified information to foreign entities.
The execution of these warrants remains uncertain, as Madobe and Mohamud command troops.
Somalia’s information minister, Daud Aweis, said that the matter was in the hands of the judiciary, which was tasked with enforcing laws through its rulings and judgments.
Jubbaland’s security minister, Yusuf Dhumal, did not respond to a request for comment.
Earlier this week, the national government dispatched additional troops to Jubbaland in response to the election.
In 2021, Jubbaland was among other regional governments that nearly clashed with the national government over plans to extend the time in office of the then-president, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed.