Brexit explained: what happens when the UK leaves the EU?

17 Sep 2018
The UK is set to officially leave the EU on 29 March 2019. But what happens next?

From hard Brexit and hard borders, to soft Brexit or the Chequers deal – here’s everything you need to know.

Understanding our animal roots can help us achieve gender equality

Demonstrators take part in the Women's March in Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., January 20, 2018. Source: Reuters/Caitlin Ochs

By Beatrice Alba | 18th September 2018

GENDER inequality is very real in 2018.

Australian parliament is a toxic place for women. Women in the media and science are targeted and harassed because of their gender. Male domination of women occurs at an interpersonal level, and in our everyday interactions.

But how we behave with each other isn’t just about individual personalities and the current social and political climate. We as Homo sapiens come with a long evolutionary history – and understanding the animal roots of our behaviour can help us create positive change to achieve gender equality.

How we behave as men and women

Research in psychology demonstrates gender differences on a broad range of personality traits, suggesting that women are less dominating than men.

On average, women score higher than men on the personality trait agreeableness, and lower on measures of social dominance orientation and self-esteem. Men are also higher on the “dark traits” of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.

Research that directly observes behaviour also shows clear gender differences in the expression of dominance. Women tend to interrupt less, smile more, and spend less time making eye contact when speaking and more time while listening compared to men.

SEE ALSO: Pakistan is on the brink of another gender revolution – this time it’s political

Much of this behaviour occurs automatically and instinctively, without us even being aware of it. We might catch ourselves lowering our eyes when someone stares at us, dropping our shoulders and contracting our bodies to make ourselves smaller, or stepping out of someone else’s way as they approach.

These submissive behaviours are also observed among one of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees.

And anyone with a pet dog would already be well familiar with dominance and submission behaviour in that species.

Yep, totally submissive here. Not going to challenge that big dog on anything. Source: Shutterstock.com

The pecking order

Dominance hierarchies are found throughout the animal world, in humans and chimpanzees, and even in cockroaches.

With exception to the recent fame of the lobster as the poster child of social climbers, the most commonly known example of dominance hierarchies is probably the pecking order of domestic hens. In these social groups, the birds will peck at each other until one runs away, which thereafter assumes a subordinate position to the hen that stands its ground.

Typically, aggressive encounters among animals are ritualised: a sufficient display of strength is often enough to cause a competitor to yield. This submissive response means that the aggression de-escalates before causing serious injury or death to either party. A dominance hierarchy is established when an animal repeatedly receives a yielding response from another in competitive encounters.

The ultimate driver of this competitive behaviour is greater access to food, space, allies, and mates that comes with being at the top of the hierarchy. These benefits mean that it is adaptive to get to the top. So evolution has selected for psychological and behavioural mechanisms that drive animals to ascend the hierarchy.

But some animals are unlikely to ever win in aggressive encounters – due to a lack of size, strength, or skill. For them, it is more adaptive to yield submissively to their opponent rather than to risk injury or death.

In evolutionary terms, it’s better to be at the bottom of the hierarchy than to be dead. Evolution has therefore also selected for submissive behaviours that are elicited when animals are faced with a more formidable opponent.

The origins of patriarchy

In humans and many other mammals, there is a particularly strong evolutionary incentive for males to acquire high status, since this can greatly increase their reproductive output.

Some of our submissive behaviours can be useful – such as preventing escalation of aggressive encounters. Source: Shutterstock.com

High-ranking males can fend off other males from accessing females, and they also tend to be more attractive to females due to their high status. Therefore, these males can potentially produce vast numbers offspring, as some notable tyrants like Genghis Khan have done. Many of us may even have such a male as an ancestor.

While females also benefit from high status, the payoff and the capacity for competing fiercely and recklessly for it is not as great as it is for males due to the demands of pregnancy and lactation.

These contrasting selection effects mean that males end up larger, stronger, and more aggressive than females in many species of mammal. This sex difference ultimately means that males are often able to physically and sexually dominate the females.

Therefore, females might often find themselves instinctively compelled to respond submissively to men as a strategy to protect themselves from aggression. This hierarchy is rooted in our evolutionary past, and deeply ingrained in our psychology.

The fight against patriarchy is a battle against our own minds.

Liberation

Our evolved instincts might be one of the reasons why women feel so much internal resistance to challenging men, as well as why this is met with such backlash. The feminist movement itself collides with this “natural order” because it is a collective uprising against this male domination.

Feminists violate expectations when they refuse to be unthreatening, unchallenging, uncritical, polite, pleasant and apologetic. The unpalatability of insubordinate women might also explain the popularity of brands of feminism that refrain from making any criticism of men’s behaviour.

SEE ALSO: India: 240,000 girls die annually due to gender discrimination

A minimal amount of critical thinking might compel many of us to want to resist the pressure and the compulsion to submit to male domination. The way out of this trap begins with becoming aware of our involuntary submission.

A greater awareness of these unconscious processes is likely to reveal a more immediate source of our submissive responses: the natural, instinctive, and adaptive fear that arises in the heat of the moment when faced with a very real and unpredictable threat of aggression.

Unfortunately, this fear can sometimes drive us to stay silent at times when the risks to our personal safety and economic security are low.

So what could we cultivate to help us overcome the fear that compels us to back down and stay silent when we should be speaking up?

Courage.

Beatrice Alba is Research Fellow at La Trobe University

This article was originally published in The Conversation. 

Rohingya refugees Crisis : The Tale of Cox’s Bazaar home to the world’s largest refugee camp

 2018-09-13

Following the Ethnic conflict in the Rakhine state in Myanmar,Rohingya refugees have found Cox’s Bazaar in Bangaladesh a safe haven. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the refugee camps around Cox’s Bazaar homes the world’s largest refugee camp.The influx is said to be the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis with the UN describing the situation in Rakhine, as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

” Various health issues have inevitably cropped up in Cox’s Bazaar owing to the conditions in the camps and the heavy monsoon. Against this backdrop Dr. Padmini Perera from the World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office in Sri Lanka assisted in providing the technical expertise required for providing health services.

She has worked in the area of emergency preparedness since 2010, initially at the Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka and now at the WHO Country Office.   In an interview with the Daily Mirror, Dr.Perera shared her experience of working in Cox’s Bazaar during a recent three week visit there. She gave an insight into the health issues prevalent and how the WHO contributed in maximizing the health services provided. She said that the refugee influx in Cox’s Bazaar was a Grade 3 emergency that required a massive response.     

Excerpts of the interview:

 Q  To start off- what were your initial observations of the situation in Cox’s Bazaar? 

I had to lead the health operation team in the Cox’s Bazaar field office. We had around 11 people working in the health operations team and we worked along with the Epidemiology, Admin and logistics teams in the WHO field office. WHO has an Operations Plan for the response and my task was to streamline the work in line with the Operations Plan.   

This was all a continuation of the services that have been provided by the WHO since the start of the influx in 2017. This time the conditions were far more settled than last time when I went there in December last year. Last time when I was there, there was an outbreak of diphtheria.  

The WHO has a way of classifying the emergencies as ungraded, Grade 1, Grade 2 and Grade 3. This is a Grade 3 emergency where a massive response is required. It’s not easy to provide health services to 1 million refugees. There are many barriers including language barriers. They speak a different language which is neither Bengali nor the language spoken in Cox’s Bazaar. 

I was anticipating most of the problems. It’s the same kind of things that crop up at any emergency. The context is different, but it’s the same issues that come out. 

Sri Lanka has a very strong healthcare delivery network. The public health network is very much in place to make sure that any person in the country can be reached

 Q  What were the main health issues that arose? 

One main issue was the spread of communicable diseases. Then there were issues related to water, sanitation and hygiene. There were quite a few camps and they were cramped up. There were a lot of partners working in the field trying to improve the situation.   

 Q  There was limited funding and the circumstances were obviously dire. How challenging was it to treat refugees? 

WHO is the cluster lead for health emergencies globally. We provide the technical lead. We support the development of plans, protocols, and provide guidance to partners. We are also involved in monitoring and the evaluation of health services in the field along with the other health partners. WHO doesn’t directly provide patient care in the field. There are almost 100 other health partners like MSF, UNICEF, UNFPA, Brac which is a local NGO, the Red Cross, the Red Crescent etc.   

 Q  Did you interact with the refugees while working there? 

My task was to provide technical guidance to the health operations team coordinating with the other technical teams and also other health partners. I was not directly involved in interactions with the refugees.   

 Q  The press release issued by the WHO states that cholera was prevented this time and that measles and diphtheria were curtailed. How was the WHO instrumental in this? 

It was through the immunization campaigns. We had around three rounds of vaccination for cholera. It was the same with diphtheria. We had several rounds of diphtheria vaccination. So we were able to curtail the diphtheria outbreak. There were no reported cases of cholera. But due to the camp conditions there, the cholera vaccine was given. The WHO planned the immunization programme together with the other health partners and the Ministry of Health of Bangaladesh.

 Q  In terms of emergency preparedness how do you think the Sri Lankan health sector can improve taking into account the experiences of working in Bangladesh? 

Sri Lanka has a very strong healthcare delivery network. The public health network is very much in place to make sure that any person in the country can be reached. Even in disasters and emergencies we use the same network. Having such a resilient and strong system has been a plus point. We also have a well-trained health staff. In addition we have the national disaster management framework and all stakeholders support each other for any emergency.   

 Q  How did your experiences of working in emergency situations in Sri Lanka assist you during your time in Cox’s Bazaar? 

It was easier for me to understand the challenges in the field and also what the needs would be. That helped a lot.   

 Q  Apart from dealing with disease outbreaks, how has the WHO been able to deal with the psychological state of the Rohingya refugees? 

It was through the mental health and psycho-social support programme. In Bangladesh it is led by Action Against Hunger (ACF), which is an international NGO which is the lead for mental health and psycho-social support. WHO provides the technical leadership to the partners in Cox’s Bazaar.

 Q  Seventy percent of births are taking place outside health facilities. What measures has the WHO taken to encourage people to access sexual and reproductive health in Cox’s Bazaar?

UNFPA leads the sexual and reproductive health technical programme. All partners in that particular group as well as the health sector has been working towards improving people’s understanding of the services available. You have over 200 health posts. Not all have labour facilities, but still, there is a good network. What we want to promote is for people to access these places, and not just stay at home (camps). We encourage people mainly through awareness by urging them to come to maternity clinics etc.   

I had to lead the health operation team in the Cox’s Bazaar field office. We had around 11 people working in the health operations team and we worked along with the Epidemiology, Admin and logistics teams

 Q  Are there adequate sanitary facilities? 

You have adequate numbers. You have adequate sources of water. But the problem is the quality. WHO is working with the partners on water quality assessment in the field.  

 Q  Do refugee children have access to education? 

Now they have schools. There is an education cluster which is working in the field providing education to the children.   

 Q  What’s the specialty of the early warning alert and response system that’s established there? 

WHO has established the Early Warning and Response System (EWARS) in the camp settling. You get alerts from the health posts on communicable diseases. 
If there is a communicable disease that is reported with a potential for an outbreak, the WHO along with other partners immediately sends a team to investigate and assure that measures are taken to prevent further spread. 
For example, if it’s a watery diarrhea case, we don’t know whether it’s just watery diarrhea or cholera. So you go to the field immediately and investigate, and do some active case finding- to see if there are more cases. Then we take remedial measures and make sure it doesn’t spread beyond that particular point.   

 Q  Do you have any memorable experiences from your time there which you would like to share? 

The thing which struck me most was visiting the Cox’s Bazaar laboratory. The last time I was there we were working towards establishing a field laboratory. 
The second time I went there it was functioning and it is so close to the camps. It contributes much to the health service delivery in the field, especially in the area of communicable diseases. It was really a pleasant experience visiting the functioning lab which we were working towards several months back.   

 Q  Any constraints you faced? 

Any emergency context has so many challenges and this is a situation involving refugees and not a situation with internally displaced individuals. There are many social and political issues involved. 

This added that extra layer of complexity to providing health services in the field which was quite a challenge. The partners are doing a good job considering the difficult conditions and WHO is providing technical assistance to ensure that the best possible healthcare is given in the field. 

Pix by - Damith Wickramasinghe 

Understanding our animal roots can help us achieve gender equality

UN investigators publish report detailing evidence for accusation of genocide against Burmese military

• Warning: graphic information in this report may upset some readers

UN report calls on Myanmar’s military leaders to be investigated and prosecuted for war crimes.
Photograph: Nyein Chan Naing/EPA

Michael Safi @safimichael-Tue 18 Sep 2018

Horrific accounts of murders, rapes, torture and indiscriminate shelling allegedly committed by the Burmese army against the Rohingya people and other minority groups have been laid out by UN investigators in an extensive new report detailing evidence for their accusation of genocide.

The report from the fact-finding mission, presented to the UN human rights council (UNHRC) on Tuesday, said Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, had committed “the gravest crimes under international law”.

The full 440-page report, a summary of which was released in August, includes accounts of women tied by their hair or hands to trees then raped; young children trying to flee burning houses but forced back inside; widespread use of torture with bamboo sticks, cigarettes and hot wax; and landmines placed at the escape routes from villages, killing people as they fled army crackdowns.

“I have never been confronted by crimes as horrendous and on such a scale as these,” said Marzuki Darusman, the chair of the mission.

The three-person panel said the Tatmadaw had developed a “toxic command climate” in which widespread human rights abuses had become the norm. It called for the army to be brought under civilian oversight, stripped of its quota of parliamentary seats and, if necessary, totally dissolved and rebuilt.

It called for senior Burmese military leaders, including the commander-in-chief, Min Aung Hlaing, to be prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

“Any engagement in any form with the Tatmadaw, its current leadership, and its businesses is indefensible,” the report said.

The investigators and their staff spent 15 months examining the conduct of Myanmar’s military and other armed groups in the states of Rakhine, Shan and Kachin, following years of reports of human rights abuses. They were denied access to Myanmar by the government but interviewed 875 witnesses who had fled the country.

The panel was nearly six months into its mission in August 2017 when Rohingya militants attacked a series of Burmese police outposts with knives and small bombs, triggering army “clearance operations” that forced more than 700,000 members of the Muslim minority group into neighbouring Bangladesh.

More than 1,700 Rohingya are still crossing the border into the Cox’s Bazar district of southern Bangladesh each month, the report said.

It gave a “conservative” estimate that at least 10,000 Rohingya people had been killed in the two months after the army crackdown commenced in August last year, including at least 750 people in the village of Min Gyi, known to the Rohingya as Tula Toli.

Rape and sexual violence were a “particularly egregious and recurrent feature” of the Tatmadaw’s conduct, the report said. It cited eyewitness accounts of Rohingya people who claim to have seen naked women and girls running through forests “in visible distress” and villages scattered with dead bodies with “large amounts of blood … visible between their legs”.

Satellite imagery included in the report showed nearly 400 “whole villages literally wiped off the map”, investigators said.

They noted a buildup of armed forces in Rakhine state in the months leading up to the clearance operations and a sharpening of anti-Rohingya rhetoric, including by civilian leaders. “The human rights catastrophe of 2017 was planned, foreseeable and inevitable,” the report said.

It sharply criticised the UN presence in Myanmar, finding that top officials were loth to pursue a human rights agenda, preferring a “business as usual” approach that prioritised development goals and maintaining access for humanitarian groups.

Some of those who tried to push human rights issues told investigators they were “ignored, criticised, sidelined or blocked in these efforts”, the report said.

Facebook was also singled out by investigators for the ease with which its open platform allowed hate speech and misinformation to spread.

Members of the panel attempted to report a post in which a human rights activist was accused of cooperating with the fact-finding mission and labelled a “national traitor”. One comment under the post read: “If this animal is still around, find him and kill him.”

The panel was told the post did not contravene Facebook guidelines and it was only removed several weeks later with the support of a contact at the social media company.

A Rohingya woman walks with a child in the Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh. Photograph: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images

Bangladesh and Myanmar have both agreed in principle that the Rohingya refugees sheltering in Cox’s Bazar should return, but the report said repatriation in the current circumstances was out of the question.

“The security forces who perpetrated gross human rights violations, with impunity, would be responsible for ensuring the security of returnees,” it said. “Repatriation in such condition is inconceivable.”

Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s representative to the UN in Geneva, told the council the report lacked “balance, impartiality and fairness”, criticising its reliance on refugee testimony and the reports of NGOs – though the Burmese government did not grant the mission access to the country.

“Not only is this report detrimental to social cohesion in Rakhine state, it also undermines the government’s efforts to bring peace, national reconciliation and development to the entire nation,” he said.

Bangladeshi officials said on Tuesday they were moving ahead with a controversial plan to relocate thousands of Rohingya refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal.

“Initially, 50 to 60 Rohingya families will be relocated in the first phase beginning next month,” an official, Habibul Kabir Chowdhury, told Agence France-Presse.

Zimbabwe cholera outbreak: Anger at crowdfunding scheme

More than 3,000 people have been infected with cholera

14 September 2018

Zimbabwe has launched a crowdfunding campaign to deal with an outbreak of cholera that has so far killed 25 people, mostly in the capital, Harare.

New Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube sent an appeal on Twitter, sharing a mobile payment account number.

An emergency has been declared and public gatherings banned in Harare to prevent the spread of infection.

Some Zimbabweans have criticised the fundraising plan on Twitter, accusing the state of misusing public money.

Image Copyright @mdimairo@MDIMAIRO

Report

In 2008, a cholera outbreak killed some 4,000 people and at least 100,000 people fell ill.

This was a key factor in persuading President Robert Mugabe to agree a power-sharing government with the opposition, as the government did not have the money to deal with the outbreak.

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The current outbreak began on 6 September after water wells were contaminated with sewage in Harare.

Tests found the presence of cholera and typhoid-causing bacteria which has so far infected over 3,000 people, Health Minister Obadiah Moyo told reporters on Thursday.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), patients were not responding to first-line antibiotics.

"Relevant medicines should be purchased as a matter of urgency as soon as resistance patterns have been ascertained," it said.

WHO also said the disease has spread to five of the country's 10 provinces.

'Inauguration' postponed

The health emergency has forced the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to postpone this weekend's mock inauguration of its leader, Nelson Chamisa, as president.

Nelson Chamisa says he won the July presidential election

Mr Chamisa has refused to back down from his claim that he won the 30 July election, even after the Constitutional Court dismissed his legal challenge against President Emmerson Mnangagwa's victory.

The police had earlier withdrawn their permission for it go ahead, citing the ban on public gatherings imposed because of the cholera outbreak.

His party now says the swearing in will be held at a "later date".

Guaranteed healthcare pledge

The cholera outbreak can be traced to Harare city council's struggle to supply water to some suburbs for more than a decade, forcing residents to rely on water from open wells and community boreholes, according to Reuters news agency.

Health officials are advising people to wash their hands regularly, drink only safe water, wash food, cook it thoroughly and avoid shaking hands.

The government-controlled Herald reports that the crowdfunding campaign has already received some backers.

They include telecommunication giant Econet Wireless, which has contributed $10m (£7m) and the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society $250,000 (£190,000).

However, Mr Ncube's plan has been condemned on social media:

Image Copyright @thandimuringa@THANDIMURINGA

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Lawyer Fadzayi Mahere wanted to remind newly elected President Emmerson Mnangagwa of his campaign promise:

Image Copyright @advocatemahere@ADVOCATEMAHERE

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This user saw the campaign as another ploy from the political class:

Image Copyright @masiemsoko@MASIEMSOKO

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While Twitter user Bruce Zvandasara said it was more worthwhile than the opposition's call for funds to pay for their legal challenge to Mr Mnangagwa's July election victory:

Image Copyright @tozvitaura@TOZVITAURA

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This Twitter user wondered why the government had the money to charter a private plane to bring back former first lady Grace Mugabe from Singapore when her mother died, but does not have funds to deal with a public health emergency:

Image Copyright @anyamwanza@ANYAMWANZA

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