12/6/20
By Julie Swift
Day 12 of 16 Days of Action Against Gender-Based Violence Against Women
#16DaysOfActivismAgainstGenderBasedViolence
#OrangeTheWorld #RatifyILO190 #generationalequality
In the midst of busy days caring for the mamas and 5 new babies that have been born in recent weeks, Haznos Valer writes: We hope the stories we share from Haznos Valer will lead people to greater empathy and a call to action. Gender-based violence against women has severe and maternal health consequences. In Ciudad Juarez, under MPP, women are even more vulnerable to gender-based violence in many ongoing ways and specifically in the area of maternal health.
To give some back ground, we operate a program called Las Zadas that seeks to attend to and care for every pregnant migrant in the city of Juarez, Mexico. Various shelters and humanitarian groups identify women in need and refer them to us. The need we saw was so great we opened a shelter specifically for pregnant migrants and women in crisis. Recently we have seen an increase in women coming to us for help accessing prenatal check ups. The border closure has caused this!
Before, at the very least, MPP papers gave proof of a pending asylum case to the Mexican government providing means to access Mexican public health services that helped with prenatal check ups, birth, and rape kits. Many asylum seekers are no longer given papers so their access to these services is incredibly limited, and sometimes denied.
Last week we got a call from a woman from Honduras. "M" was 4 months along and was bleeding heavily. Because she had no papers of any kind, she was not admitted for care in the public health center. We were later able to get her care through a private doctor.
In our shelter most of the women come in very far along in their pregnancies, with no prenatal care up to that point. There are many women in MPP that will face unnecessary barriers caused by the asylum system in an already crisis situation. Pregnancy is a uniquely female experience and advocacy for the most vulnerable during their asylum process is crucial to ending gender based violence.