Ngocsw-geneva.ch

26 October 2012 – 12h to 14h30- Room II-III, Second floor, World Council of Churches, 130 Route de Ferney, Genève, bus stop : Crêts des Morillons Light buffet: bread, cheese and wine. Translation French/English The NGO Forum for Health invites you to a lunchtime seminar with a group of Women NGO leaders touring Europe
to expose the plight on women of the austerity plans implemented in all of Europe in the name of decreasing the national European Feminism in the Face of Illegitimate Public Debt,
Austerity and Social Crisis
- From Greece: Sonia Mitralias, founder, Women's group against Debt and Austerity, & EU CADTM
- From Hungary: Judit Morva, economist, coordinator Le Monde Diplomatique for Hungary
- From England: Felicity Dowling, Women against the Cuts
The unprecedented dismantling of the Welfare State, in Europe, has dramatic implications for women's health and women's well being, and means a dramatic set back in Women's Rights and Women's Rights to Health.
Addressing the Social Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, last January 24th in Strasbourg, France, Sonia Mitralias stated: «Two years after the shock treatment imposed by the European Central Bank, the EU Commission and the IMF to Greece the outcome is catastrophic, revolting and inhuman».
Greece has entered its 7th successive 'Memorandum' to shrink public expenditures, while the national public debt to GDP ratio is still the same as that in 2009 when the process started, and, were these proposed extreme austerity policy to persist until 2020, it is officially expected that the debt/GDP ratio might still reach 120% ! Sonia says: What they now admit is that an entire European society is being destroyed. for nothing! In Greece, the change is drastic for health and women: the country has entered a health emergency: shortages of essential medicines, including cancer drugs and basics like aspirin, large scale bankruptcy of pharmaceutical outlays (because of the State's inability to reimburse medicines), gaps in basic hospital supplies, doctors in public health going months without pay. The bill for women to deliver in maternity wards has risen out of reach, and women end up giving birth without any services, sometimes in the streets! Public health services are being put through savage cuts, and hospital beds reduced by 40%. Today, 3 million Greeks (a third of the population) has lost all health insurance coverage. Women's reproductive rights are no longer guaranteed.
Greek women face a double burden: themselves first hit be unemployment and poverty, the situation forces them into a situation of ''replacement”: they have to provide health care, day care, psychosocial care to the family and neighbours, work triple, and thus the patriarchal side of Greece is imposed on them with untold brutality.
And Greece is not the only case: Portugal is no longer reimbursing the 'day after' pill. In Hungary, Le Monde diplomatique has documented that the strategy of 'competitiveness' imposed by the EU leaders has started a process of 'de-industrialisation' of the country, with collapsing working conditions and wages, a growing informal Black market labour force, part of the 'competitiveness' drive shaping reforms in labour across the EU. Today, the same bitter pill has began to be applied in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and is proposed for France.
Event organized by the People's Health France , a member of The NGO Forum.
The NGO Forum for Health is promoting free debate of ideas and the views expressed by the speakers or guests are the sole responsibility of their authors and do not imply endorsement by the NGO Forum itself or its constituents.

Source: http://www.ngocsw-geneva.ch/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/EU-Women-tour-NGO-FORUM-Eng-Oct-26.pdf