Dear decision makers of the world, let women make their own decisions about their bodies, okay?

A new report from the United Nations says this, just in a lot more words. The UN Special Rapporteur on Health, Anand Grover, informed member states that states should be providing safe and legal abortion for all of their women, and that not doing so is messing with women’s rights.

His views are highly unpopular (surprise, surprise) within the UN. Many officials are going as far as to say Grover was overstepping his mandate as special rapporteur. In case you didn’t know what the heck a special rapporteur does, I’m here to inform you. They are appointed through the United Nations but operate independently to address human rights problems globally. They do research, write reports and make suggestions on how countries can improve their human rights. Read More »

Photo credit: Chris Tse

While many university students spent their summers in minimum wage jobs or fetching coffee, I spent mine interning in Ghana.

In case you need a little geography and history lesson, Ghana is located in west Africa, and shares borders with Cote D’Ivoire, Togo and Burkina Faso. It’s also one of Africa’s leading examples for democracy; it was the first sub-saharan country to gain independence from its colonial power, and since the 1992 constitution was approved there have been five relatively democratic elections.

I traveled to Ghana with the Canadian ngo, Journalists for Human Rights, as one of five university interns. My internship was spent in the newsroom of an English radio station, Kapital Radio, in the country’s second largest city, Kumasi. Four days a week I would head to the station to work on daily news bulletins, go out to cover stories with local journalists, then head back to the station to edit sound clips and write scripts. Every Saturday I would help produce Ghana’s only exclusive human rights talk show, Know Your Rights, hosted by my supervisor, Muftaw Mohammed. Each week we would tackle one of the country’s human rights issues, from the highly controversial homosexuality to land rights under traditional rule.

Though I only worked at the station four days a week, I didn’t exactly get a long weekend. On top of the work I did at Kapital Radio, I had a series of deliverables to be completed for jhr, including weekly video and written blogs and research on Maternal Health. So I got to see a lot of adorable Ghanaian babies.

My summer wasn’t all work though. During our week long vacation, one of my Canadian colleagues and I traveled through six regions –  from Accra to Bawku – in eight days, with many stops along the way. All on buses and tro-tros, which are kind of like a large van. Throughout my 14 weeks in Ghana I went on a walking safari at Mole National Park, trekked through the forest at the Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary, watched the national soccer team play and hung out at a popular beach spot at night.

My experience wasn’t your typical going to Africa to do development work and think you’re saving the world experience. I learned more from my time in the country than I’m sure anyone learned from me. I stumbled my way through Twi, the local dialect in Kumasi; learned how to properly eat fufu (a local dish) with my hands and learned about the history of the Ashanti people. The beautiful landscapes and welcoming people are just a few of the reasons I would recommend spending some time in Ghana.

Check out some of my amazing photos from Ghana below:

initiating the gallery...

Imagine being told you had 6 weeks to live.

Now imagine knowing that if you lived anywhere other than Africa, you could probably be cured.

Imagine being 14 years old and knowing this.

Meet Felix Yeboah, a Ghanaian teenager with chronic kidney failure.

On Sunday, March 3, in a life-saving emergency operation, Felix received his father’s kidney at the University Hospital in Birmingham, UK, care of Transplant Links, an organization of experienced kidney transplant doctors who volunteer their time and abilities in countries like Ghana.

According to an article in a Ghanian newspaper from August 2006, kidney failure in Ghana forms 35% of medical admissions. Out of the 5000-8000 patients in Ghana, only 35 received haemodialysis (a nessary procedure to prevent total kidney failure) per year! As of the time of that article, there were 17 haemodialysis machines in the entire country.

According to the Transplant Links website, in some African countries, HIV/AIDS is more treatable than Kidney Failure. Read More »