23rd September 2002
The sex discrimination began at Heathrow Airport. In Terminal 3 the queue for security was incredible and chaotic. Then, out comes an official who shouts "Any men travelling alone come to this check area" and off go all the men travelling alone to a peaceful haven where they are dealt with in seconds. I ask why a woman travelling alone cannot get a similar upgrade but am told due to lack of female "searchers" at that time I must stick in with the mob. Attempts to say I did not mind who searched me would not have prevailed, I felt, so I busied myself helping a young Indian woman with a twin buggy, three children under three and so many toys, baby bottles, soothers, etc. I would have thought hiding a machete would be no problem!
Terminal 3 is the gateway to Africa and the Far East at Heathrow and I was on my way to Ethiopia. The UNFPA had asked for some Irish Parliamentarians to come to Ethiopia to look at their efforts there. I chair an informal committee of members of the Oireachtas who support the efforts of UNFPA in family planning and development. The IFPA is our link organisation with UNFPA and a very good job Catherine Heaney of the IFPA does in keeping us updated with developments. As well, Ethiopia is one of the six priority countries for Ireland Aid and those of us who travelled would be able to see these efforts as well.
Addis Ababa is an incredible city. Until 30 years ago Ethiopia was really a feudal country but the late Emperor, Haile Selassie had encouraged many international organisations to set up their headquarters in Addis. It is a centrally positioned city and the climate is delightful. No malaria is another plus.
There were six of us, Eoin Ryan and Fiona O'Malley from the Government parties, Simon Coveney and Damien English from Fine Gael and Jan O'Sullivan from the Labour Party. I have never gone abroad with a more hard working group and between the lot of us we managed to cover a great deal of ground. We went first to Tigray up on the Eritrean border. Until three years ago fighting was going on in this area and peace has been followed by a severe drought. We split up to look at health and education facilities and I went off to look at the crops, or rather the lack of them. From the air Ethiopia looks so green but up close the crops were stunted and sparse due to lack of rain. Teff is the most important grain for making their bread, it had not even flowered and I saw men, women and children out in the fields trying to weed what was left and saving the weeds to feed their animals. Barley was about six inches high and the ears flat. The sky was full of clouds, frequently black but they just passed over. It is estimated that anything between 6 and 10 million people in Ethiopia will face starvation this year.
To cheer me up the locals took me to a World Food Programme store where an Irish woman called Katherine Feeney was working. I swelled up with pride on behalf of the Irish taxpayer when she showed me the mountains of sacks of sorghum and beans bought with our money in Ethiopia to feed people in drought stricken areas. There are areas where surpluses are produced so it greatly helps the local economy and encourages farmers to produce if we buy locally. There was a considerable amount of wheat sent by the United States there, too, but as was explained to me, Ethiopians normally don't eat wheat and they have no mills for it so it was a somewhat problematic gift. It reminded me a bit of our famine when maize was kindly sent but we had similar problems in using it.
My colleagues saw government health centres which were very short of supplies and personnel. After a while we realised that when the Government says it has opened so many health centres in the last year, this indeed may be true, but it doesn't mean much is going on there.
My great interest in this trip was in promoting safe motherhood and HIV/AIDs awareness. The maternal mortality rate in Ethiopia is about 890 per 100,000 deliveries and up to 1,400 - 1,500 in some rural areas. The health facilities are nil in some parts of the country with 2 to 4% of women getting ante-natal care from a health professional and about the same number having a health professional attend the delivery of the child. Early marriage, often forced following abduction is a real problem. The Government has raised the age of marriage to 18 but enforcing the law in this huge country of 67 million people is another matter. Often the parents of the girl do not try to get her back from her abductor. Family size is very big, the fertility rate being 5.9. It is much lower in Addis but 6.9 or more in rural areas. Pregnancy at a very early age results in obstructed labour very frequently and the severe female genital mutilation that is very prevalent in Ethiopia is no help either.
General education is desperately needed and an improvement in women's position is Ethiopian society. All over the rural areas women carry huge loads of sticks and water while lovely little donkeys gallop by! I gave several speeches on donkeys being better at carrying sticks and water than women and that women could do something more productive with their time.
But when one meets a woman who was suspended from a pole to help her obstructed labour, who fell from the pole when it broke and broke her hip, who then got osteomyelitis which, of course, was not treated and is now very lame one realises that carrying sticks may not seem a very great burden.
More in my next article. Be warned!
Senator Mary Henry, MD
