Nobody knows how many thousands of rape kits remain untested across the country. Credit Ted Soqui/Corbis
May 9, 2015 – By Nicholas Kristof, NY Times
ROBBINS, Ill. — NATASHA, 14, had just gotten off the school bus after ninth-grade basketball practice one evening and was walking home on a quiet street beside a creek. When she heard footsteps behind her, she thought it was one of her classmates.
Instead, it was a man who grabbed her and threw her over a fence into a wooded area beside the creek. He beat her, stripped her and raped her, she says, and then dragged her into the creek and plunged her head under the water.
A couple of times, he pulled her head up to see if she was still breathing. So she says that the next time she pretended to be dead. He kicked her body further into the stream and then left.
Natasha says she waited and, when she was sure he had gone, waded back to shore and ran home. Her family rushed her to the hospital, where she endured hours of humiliating scrutiny as nurses collected a rape kit: DNA, hairs, fibers, anything that could be found on her body. The police took a statement from Natasha and picked up the rape kit from the hospital.
Hibaaq Osman - Founder, Karama
"Europe is declaring war on smugglers" the EU's top migration official said last month. As the Mediterranean fills with boats and the bodies of migrants from Africa and the Arab world, it is inopportune language like this underlines how grave a situation we find ourselves in and how far away a humane solution seems.
More than 3,200 refugees trying to migrate from their troubled homelands into Europe died in 2014 and already, in 2015, the death toll tops 1,500. The EU's plans to address the tragedy are to double funding for border surveillance and search and rescue missions. Rescue, while it can save migrants from immediate death in choppy waters and horrid, claustrophobic conditions in leaky boats, does not mean anyone is being saved. Instead, women, men, and children fleeing nations impoverished by war, corruption and weak government like Syria, Somalia, Libya, Nigeria, and the DRC find themselves at the end of their ropes, hours into a journey from despair only to find themselves being sent back to the impossible, dangerous living conditions from which they though they had escaped.
The Our Bodies Ourselves Global Initiative (OBOGI) delivers evidence-based, culturally appropriate information on health, sexuality and reproduction to girls and women all over the world.
OBOGI collaborates with women’s organizations (see map above) that request permission and technical support to translate and adapt “Our Bodies, Ourselves” for public education and political action in their country. Most of these adaptations are published in book form. Some groups produce online content and mobile apps, while others convert health content into posters and other formats that can be shared easily in public spaces.
Through their publications and outreach, OBOS’s Global Network partners reach millions of people with information on sexual and reproductive health and human rights, as well as the skills to translate this information into action.
Fact sheet N°290
Updated May 2015
Key facts
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Globally, the number of deaths of children under 5 years of age fell from 12.7 million in 1990 to 6.3 million in 2013.
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In developing countries, the percentage of underweight children under 5 years old dropped from 28% in 1990 to 17% in 2013.
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Globally, new HIV infections declined by 38% between 2001 and 2013.
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Existing cases of tuberculosis are declining, along with deaths among HIV-negative tuberculosis cases.
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In 2010, the world met the United Nations Millennium Development Goals target on access to safe drinking-water, as measured by the proxy indicator of access to improved drinking-water sources, but more needs to be done to achieve the sanitation target.
