“Lack of love is why most girls end up being victims of sex trafficking”

‘Reaching Out’ Romania works to bring better lives to trafficked girls

Eva Fernández Ortiz – WNN Features

Romanian ‘Reaching Out’ shelter director and advocate for youth, Iana Matei, believes strongly in the empowerment of girls as she works to help sex-trafficking survivors gain life skills, training and a stronger self-image. Image: Marina Gersony

(WNN) Constanta, ROMANIA: After studying psychology and living in Australia for some years, human rights activist and street-child advocate Iana Matei returned to her native country – Romania. When she returned in 1998 her life changed in a big way. As a psychologist and ‘expert’ in street children, Matai was contacted by local police when they told her that they needed her help.

Three teenage girls who were picked up for prostitution needed to be taken to see a doctor. Matei helped the girls, but was well aware that there was no where they could go after their visit to the doctor.

At the time, there was no shelter in Romania that would take in young prostitutes or help them.
Aware of the dangers the girls would face if they stayed out on the streets, Matei made a decision that would end up helping numerous teenage girls find a new future and a new life. It was then that Matei decided to start Reaching Out – a shelter that continues today to work to build back the lives of children who are victims of sex trafficking, exploitation and sexual slavery.

Human rights journalist Eva Fernández Ortiz, for WNN – Women News Network, recently had a chance to interview Iana Matei about her life and her work to save children trapped by human trafficking. Their engaging and informative discussion follows:

Interview to Iana Matei by Eva Fernandez Ortiz

Music star Deeyah speaks pride and multiculturalism in Norway

Eva Fernández Ortiz – WNN Features

A multicultural crowd gets on a train in Oslo, Norway June 7, 2010. Image: Ellen Macdonald

(WNN) Oslo, NORWAY: As Norway’s 32-year-old right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik looked out at a Norwegian public courtroom in Oslo, Tuesday, November 14, 2011, he made a formal statement before the court in an attempt to place himself at the head of a “resistance movement” against immigrants and multiculturalism in Norway.

¿Qué dicen sus arrugas?

Eva Fernández

BBC Mundo

 Sábado, 2 de julio de 2011

Dime qué arrugas tienes y te diré quien eres. Este es el mensaje central de la lectura de arrugas, una práctica que a menudo es vista con escepticismo.

¿Tenemos la vida escrita en la cara?

La lectura de las arrugas forma parte de morfopsicología, que algunos describen como una pseudociencia.

Cameroon ‘Aunties’ educate to protect rural girls from breast ironing

Eva Fernández Ortiz – Women News Network – WNN

Cameroon girls face multiple dangers as their bodies mature, including the dangers of early pregnancy where traditions have lead mothers to use any means necessary, including breast ironing, in efforts to protect them. Image: Carsten ten Brink

(WNN) CAMEROON: All mothers will do whatever it takes to protect their children’s well being. In Cameroon, this ‘protection’ goes as far as burning their teenage daughters’ breasts. Breast ironing is a traditional practice that painfully affects about one in four girls in Cameroon, Africa. But new education programs for girls by Cameroon volunteer ‘Aunties’ are showing progress.
“I was 11 years old. My mum did it to me. She put the pestle next to the fireside and massaged the breast. It was very painful…,” remembers Cameroonian Lindsay Efuengho, who is twenty-two-years-old.

Nuclear radiation exposure concerns mount for mothers Japan

Eva Fernández Ortiz and Shubhi Tandon – Women News Network – WNN

Japan mother and child. Image: Wendy Tanner

(WNN) TOKYO: As parents from Fukushima prefecture line up in Tokyo for public protests and a more recent 7.0 level earthquake hit off shore of the east coast of Honshu, Japan on July 9, the latest data on nuclear power reveals: the amount of radiation inside the plant’s reactor has reached much higher than originally expected levels. 

Current released figures through JAIN – Japan Atomic Industrial Forum show 4,000 millisieverts per hour of radiation on June 4 was measured in Reactor No. 1 through a steam release rising from a crevice in the floor.
But what do the figures mean? And what does it mean for mothers and women who are pregnant in regions that are highly impacted by six damaged nuclear reactors with three complete core melt-down failures at the Fukushima plant?

‘War is just a microcosm of peace’ – Interview with Zainab Salbi

Eva Fernández Ortiz – Women News Network – WNN

Zainab Salbi talking with women and girls in the Women for Women International Afghanistan Program. Image: WomenforWomen.org

Protection by mutilation

By using a smooth stone, heated carefully over fire, a mother presses and burns the growing breast of her young daughter to make them disappear. Crying in pain, the girl begs her to stop but her mother assures her it is for her own good. What good? What could possibly be worth justifying such a harmful intervention?

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