[NEWS] Global Fund Announces $1.6 Billion More in Funding Over Next 2 Years

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The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced this week a windfall of $1.6 billion dollars in additional funding available over the next two years. The statement points to “strategic decisions made by the Board,” including cutting staff by a surprising 7.4 percent. The new amount also includes a combined billion dollars in donations from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Japan. 

This news was roundly celebrated in places like Burma that were dealt a big blow with cuts to the Global Fund last year. The Guardian reports this week that “in a country where nearly 33% of people live below the poverty line, thousands of Burmese are unlikely ever to be able to afford ART, which, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), cost $30 a month.”

[COMMENTARY] Sex Work is Work, Plenary Speech by Kaythi Win

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By Kthi Win

Plenery speech by Kaythi Win, Chairperson of Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers, at Association of Women in Development Forum forum in Istanbul on April 21,  2012. See the exciting video here.

Hello everybody,

I am Kthi Win from Myanmar and I am a sex worker. I manage a national organization for female, male & transgender sex workers in Burma & I am also the chairperson of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers.  Until now, organizing anything in Myanmar has been very difficult.  And people ask, “how did you set up a national program for sex workers?”  And my answer to them is “Our work is illegal.  Every night we manage to earn money without getting arrested by the police.  We used to work and organize together, so we use this knowledge in order to work out how we can set up the National Network without making the government angry”.

This topic is about transforming economic power.  I want to say to you, that when a woman makes the decision to sell sex, she has already made the decision to empower herself economically.  What we do in organizing sex workers, is we build on the power that the sex worker has already taken for herself – the decision to not be poor.

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[NEWS] Financing Dispossession: China’s Opium Substitution Programme in Northern Burma

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By Kevin Woods & Tom Kramer

 

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Contrary to official rhetoric China’s opium crop substitution program has very little to do with providing mechanisms to decrease reliance on poppy cultivation or provide alternative livelihoods for ex-poppy growers.

This week the Transnational Institute published a comprehensive report documenting new developments at the Chinese Burmese border.They find that China’s opium crop substitution program has very little to do with providing mechanisms to decrease reliance on poppy cultivation or provide alternative livelihoods for ex-poppy growers. They call for investments related to opium substitution to be carried out in a more sustainable, transparent, accountable, and equitable fashion

You can read the whole report here or read on for the Executive Summary.

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