Our next intern dispatch comes from Lisi Owen, who is an LSRJ intern in Manila, Philippines. Here’s more about Lisi, and then her first fabulous post.

Lisi Owen is a rising 2L at the University of Denver (DU). She wants to pursue a career in public international law and hopes to some day be able to work for the U.N. At DU she is involved with Amnesty International, LSRJ, the Denver Journal for International Law and Policy, and the DU Law Civil Rights Clinic. Outside DU she volunteers with the Colorado Lawyers Committee, the African Community Center, and Dress for Success Denver.

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Hello from the Philippines! As Emily told everyone last week, this summer LSRJ has placed interns in Thailand, the Philippines and Nepal. I am the intern in Manila, Philippines, and am working with EnGendeRights, Inc., a women’s rights legal NGO.

Our biggest project for the summer is working to repeal an executive order of former Manila Mayor Jose “Lito” Atienza that effectively bans modern family planning services (pills, IUDs, ligation, injectables, vasectomies, etc.) in Manila City. Executive Order No. 003 was instituted in 2000 shortly after Atienza took office, and although a new administration has now taken over, the EO has yet to be repealed.

The effect of the contraception ban has been felt most heavily by poor women who are unable to afford contraceptives and other family planning services from private hospitals or who are unable to spend the time and money to travel to other cities where such services are available. For detailed accounts of the burden the ban has placed on these women, you can check out a report compiled by local Philippine NGOs and the Center for Reproductive Rights, in New York, entitled Imposing Misery: The Impact of Manila’s Contraception Ban on Women and Families, available on CRR’s website under publications.

While we are working hard to pressure the current Mayor, Alfredo Lim, to repeal the executive order, and to pressure the national government to maintain a more pro-family planning stance, we have already made some progress in terms of actually addressing the family planning needs of women in Manila. Through a partnership with Marie Stopes we were able to provide free ligation services for women in Tondo, Manila, which is one of the poorest areas in the entire Metro Manila area. Additionally, last Friday in honor of World Population Day the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network held a reproductive health fair, also in Tondo, at which hundreds of women availed of family planning services. Such an event is unprecedented in Manila, and was a huge achievement given the difficulty NGOs and other healthcare providers have faced in the past in providing family planning services in Manila.

I must reiterate Emily’s point about how amazing it is to actually see the accumulation of my academic knowledge “filled in by the color of experience.” Reading about international law and its implementation and actually seeing it on the ground, so to speak, are two entirely different things. It certainly is inspirational and exhilarating to be a part of the latter!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 4:52 pm and is filed under guests, human rights, international. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.