Today, the 13th of June is the International Albinism Awareness Day. Today, we’re going to highlight a condition that has been misunderstood and stigmatized, harming thousands of innocent people for years as a consequence – and the discrimination is still going on. What is albinism, how are people with this condition affected and why?

Albinism is a condition caused by a lacking ability to produce melanin – a broad term for a group of natural pigments found in most organisms. The condition is inherited, non-contagious and affects all sexes and ethnicities. In most cases albinism is inherited in a recessive pattern, meaning that both parents of the affected carry the mutated gene without showing signs of it. People who suffer from albinism are physically characterized by very light skin and hair. They usually have impaired sight and are sensitive to the sun and bright light. Due to this, these people are also more prone to get skin cancer, which statistics also show as in some societies the majority in this group dies from skin cancer between 30 and 40 years of age. There’s no cure for albinism, but skin cancer can be prevented with the access to health care and sun-protective means such as sunscreen.

However, health and social support can not be taken for granted. In fact, in many countries these helpful means are not available. Albinism is most prevalent in sub-saharan Africa and in some of the poorest countries in the world such as Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Furthermore, not only do people with albinism suffer from their physical condition, but also a significant stigma. Due to their different looks and disabilities people with albinism often face intersecting discrimination and abandonment from families. This is a global problem, although most reported cases come from African countries where the harassments are more severe. Reasons for this include poverty, the fact that most habitants are dark-skinned and ignorance in the form of perilous belief of witchcraft. Body parts from people with albinism are believed to give happiness, prosperity and wealth. Hence, the victims constantly face the threat of having their bodies violated in the hands of a corrupt market. Their life isn’t worth a penny, but their body parts are worth a fortune.

So what are the underlying mechanisms for this kind of discrimination? There are many feasible explanation for this, one being that what is unknown is also unpleasant. How often do you feel this way? I know I do, many times per day, and I believe that it’s a normal psychological phenomena. What’s foreign is equivalent to chaos. Too much chaos makes us uneasy and anxious, which is weary for the brain. On the opposite, structure and routines bring us equanimity and comfort. This is why our brain constantly tries to make sense out of our surrounding by categorizing and explaining it. This function is crucial for our survival, because imagine if we didn’t have it and just looked at things as they appear to us: a table for example would just be four sticks connected to a disc and not something on which you can put things. It wouldn’t be a concept that makes sense to us and is therefore of no use. In psychological terms these concepts are called cognitive schemas, which are basic assumptions about how the world works.

Broken down like this it’s obvious that this function is necessary for us. However, the world is very complex and sometimes we simplify our environment too much and create inaccurate explanations that can cause serious harm. I believe that this is the foundation for hostility, as we become afraid or aversive towards the unknown. In the worst scenarios we have witnessed hostility being directed at different groups of people, such as individuals with albinism. This is horrendous and we can contribute to the better by educating ourselves and raising issues like this. We stand in solidarity against intolerance and we give voice to those who are silenced.

Jenny Giang

Recently, a new survey surfaced on my Facebook page, giving information on people’s attitude towards LGBT+ topics in Estonia, my home country. Estonian Human Rights Center has conducted three studies regarding the topic in 2012, 2014 and 2017. Now, a new survey has been conducted in 2019, and it was sad to see how little the attitudes have changed regarding homosexuality. 41% out of the 1022 respondents thinks that homosexuality is acceptable but, sadly, more than half (52%) of Estonians still think it is unacceptable. Differences in the attitude might be attributed to age, education levels and the language spoken at home. 56% of the people would not think differently of their child if they were gay or lesbian. Only 44% of the people, however, would not be disturbed by the teacher of their children being openly homosexual, and 46% would vote for a candidate if they were homosexuals.

Interesting to note that 59% of the respondents would not feel uncomfortable in a social setting involving gays, and 60% for lesbians. I am wondering what could the LGBT+ people do to make heterosexuals so uncomfortable; would they be threatening their heteronormativity by being themselves? In most cases the poor people probably don’t even know how many homosexuals might have been hanging out with them or even shook their hands. 45% of the respondents believe that allowing same-sex people to marry would lessen the value of marriage between a man and a woman. This part is very confusing to me, how can a marriage between two loving people diminish anyone else’s love? Only 38% agree that same-sex couples should have the right to marry and even less (27%) agree that same-sex partners should be able to adopt children. There is one development though! First time in the history of this survey, there are more people supporting (49%) than opposing (39%) the legal registration of cohabitation for same-sex partnership. 

I cannot say I am surprised by the numbers; I have always said that while young Estonians are pretty open-minded and chill about the subject, I still see an overwhelming discomfort with, and hateful things uttered on the subject. The older the people are, the less they are okay with people loving who they wish – also, very evident in my own family where my grandmother is very adamantly against homosexuals. I believe my parents are also a bit confused on the subject because I haven’t really seen support from them but at least they do not say hateful things. The rise of our Conservative People’s Party does not help with the situation, as they are very focused on protecting the family and getting the “homo propaganda” out of our schools, kindergarten, and our small country, where women only exist to make babies.

We had a win in 2014, when Estonia was the first formerly Soviet-occupied country that passed a law allowing same-sex couples to legally register their partnership. However, the implementing acts were not passed because of governmental change and the situation remains unclear. Additionally, Estonia does not recognize same-sex marriages. In 2018, Estonian Supreme Court affirmed that a same-sex marriage between an Estonian and an American, wedded in the US, is not recognized by the state and the American does not have the rights to live or work in our country. I heard their story at a LGBT+ event and I cannot imagine what they must go through – wishing to live together, even having had the opportunity to get married only to have our country not recognize a piece of paper just because they are the same sex. It’s hard enough falling in love with someone outside of Europe, I wish the situation was easier for the people involved. There should be no borders when it comes to love.

On Rainbow Europe map, Estonia ranks 21st among the 49 European countries (including non-EU) with regard to policies and laws protecting the rights of the LGBT+ community, according to ILGA. The ranking called Rainbow Europe records country’s legal standards (regarding equality, family issues, hate speech, legal gender recognition, freedom of expression and asylum rights) to compare with its European neighbors. To improve the situation in Estonia, we should start with our government, considering how people in power choose to regard people different from them quite negatively. By contrast, our first female president, Kersti Kaljulaid, is openly supportive of same-sex couples and draws attention to many flaws in Estonian society, such as talking about domestic violence in her speeches. Therefore, the political landscape and the society is becoming more and more polarized. Secondly, I hope that Estonia will overcome the legal limbo regarding same-sex partnership. Comparing Estonia to its neighbors, Finland ranks fourth in the list and Latvia 39th. It is harrowing how vast the difference is between the neighboring countries; we have a lot to learn from Finland.

Taking my country’s situation into account I really cannot say that I am proud to be Estonian. I have lived and am living abroad, and I wish I could offer better news about the situation in my country. Homophobia is not the only problem we should overcome – sexism, racism, alcoholism and domestic violence are some of the other demons we should confront. However, who I am is a proud bisexual woman hoping for a better future and better attitudes towards women, homosexuals and people of color in our small safe Estonia.

Jaanika Malla

Sources:
https://humanrights.ee/teemad/vordne-kohtlemine/eesti-elanike-hoiakud-lgbt-teemadel/

https://estonianworld.com/life/lgbt-rights-estonia-ranks-21st-on-rainbow-europe-map/

You are suffocating. The organs you rely on to produce oxygen are giving and when the toxic level increases we can no longer breath. Do you feel it? Maybe you can imagine how it might feel like but you cannot really know since it is not actually happening to your own organs. The organs I am talking about are the ones you share with the entire earth in systematic connections. I am talking about the oceans.

Over 70 percent of the earth is covered by oceans and the same amount of our oxygen comes from these oceans. This might come as a chock; why are we then fighting to maintain the Amazon, rainforests and forests around the world? Firstly, it is correct that the Amazon turns carbon dioxide into oxygen and produces 20 times more oxygen than all humans can consume. But not a single one leave the forests. The water that the trees and vegetation are absorbing creates a floating river that goes to the Andes. Here the gas condenses and makes a river, which subsequently erodes the nutrient-rich rocks. When the river finally enters the ocean it's enriched with the substances from the mountains. Nutrients work as a fundament for new life in our oceans. It enables diatoms (the secret of Earth's oxygen supply) to reproduce.

Not only are the oceans the lungs of our planet but they also regulates the climate, gives us food, cleans the water we drink and are a great source of medicines. But all of this only works if the oceans are functioning. Plastic pollution, high amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, chemicals and unsustainable fishing damages the oceans normal conditions. This is resulting in climate change all around the world. A difference in fauna in the water, the oceans, is affecting the food chain and more than 2.6 billion people are depending on the ocean to provide them with protein.

The theme for the World Oceans day 2019 is gender: Gender literacy and to create greater oceans. The United Nations motivates this with: “to promote gender equality in ocean-related activities such as marine scientific research, fisheries, labour at sea, migration by sea and human trafficking, as well as policy-making and management." to discuss the topic and try to change it. (1) This is a rather unreached issue and especially in relation to oceans. But to work with empowering women and girls is one of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals that is also strongly connected to a sustainable future in all aspect of human life and the environment.

We can see a rising awareness of plastic pollution. ‘Play it out’ is a campaign to prevent plastic from going into the oceans. Today, 13,000,000 tons of plastic leak into the oceans every year, damaging and killing 100,000 marine animals annually. This affects our living conditions directly. Of course the climate can handle more than we sometime think. We have had different climates during the early stages of this planet. What is happening now though, is altering the circumstances of our living conditions. For example, the oxygen level in the atmosphere has stayed on 20,9 percent during a long time working as a prerequisite for our form of life, a higher level oxygen can lead to a burning earth instead.

Celebrate this day by thinking about something else than yourself. Grab a bag – preferably not plastic – and go outside to collect plastic waste that has ended up in the nature, by the ocean, it doesn’t matter. The most important thing is to get the plastic pollution to stop and to deal with the damage we humans have don. This might seem pointless when there is only one percent of the plastic in the oceans that we can see. But sometimes the small task can make a difference. The policy-makers and politicians need a mass of people to enable the society accordingly. This is also strongly associated to the power of the consumer. Ergo, the work of making the oceans sustainable is equal to a sustainable future where everyone can participate.

Ewa Florin
1. https://www.un.org/en/events/oceansday/index.shtml

A Loophole in care
​We need to talk about a small thing with big and horrible impacts. It has been called a blind spot in women's healthcare: it is called obstetric fistula. A fistula is a hole or canal that link two body parts, organs,  together that are normally separate. Obstetric means the female genitals, lower abdomen and childbirth. Obstetric fistulas is in most cases a childbirth injury that is caused by prolonged obstructed labor, but it can also appear during rape. When it appears it not only causes a hole  between the birth canal and the bladder or rectum so they can’t control their bladder, it is also commonly result of a stillborn child. And if this wasn't enough, the women are often driven away from their husbands, families and society due to lack of hygiene and smell from the leaking urine. Some women even stop drinking water so they don’t leak urine which can cause kidney failure.
       World Health Organization WHO estimate that 2 million women in sub-Saharan Africa, Arab region, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean are living with obstetric fistula but this number is based on only the women who seek help, meaning that many go under radar because of the shame and humiliation connected to the condition. With around 50,000 to 100,000 new cases occurring each year, Obstetric fistula is still an unknown injury mainly because it’s only affect marginalized members of society − the poor, young and illiterate women in remote area that don’t have an adequate maternal care and don’t have money for caesarean. This problem is showing us that we need to work with questions about equality and to prove health care around the world so even the most, at the time, powerless members of society can get a safe and adequate medical care. Leading to a normal and healthy life, a normal life.
       This medical condition is connected to a health system that is not meeting the needs of women and therefore the emancipation of women in general. Because the injure are not only affecting women’s health but also their independence and ability to earn a living and to have a social life. The core of human life as Hannah Arendt called it: To live among others. This international day is created to shine light on this women matter and to break the lack of knowledge associated with it. The United Nations UN wants to highlight women's health care and act accordingly with Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good health and well-being, including maternal health, to raise awareness and support to stop this devastating injury that is destroying lifes.  Obstetric fistula is preventable and can be avoided just by having an adequate medical care for pregnant women, postpone the first pregnancy until young girls are physically mature and timely access to obstetric care. To work with awakeness and knowledges around the injury can help women that are suffering to seek adequate medical care and nonetheless work with normalizing and minimize the stigma from society. As strange as it might sound fistula are in some communities seen as some kind of wrongdoing or punishment, rather then the medical condition that it is.
        The treatment for obstetric fistula has a good success rate at 90 percent (for less complex cases) if it’s done by a trained fistula surgeon. Which is a strong argument to end the suffer and terrible way of living. Because with full recovery, women can live a normal life, meaning no problem with bladder control and smell and no sequelae, they can even give birth to new children.  But behind every obstetric fistula is a women in suffer – many pray to God to take their life – she need a support system that can bring her back to the life among others, to enter the agora and to fully interact with time.
         Remember that it isn’t a privilege to have a good and safe health care, it is a human right. Health denot to freedom, the same freedom that lays in the concept of bio-power. But to realize that we need to spread the word and knowledge to the people. People are the core of a society and it’s what makes it alive. An organism that evolves and create: A dialectical movement between potentiality and actuality.  

Ewa Florin

On this world exist around 8,7 million animal and plant species.

More then 1 million of them are thretened.

To raise awerness of this topic, we celebrate the „world day of biodiversity“ on the 22th of May under the topic „our biodiversity, our food, our health“.

Because Biodiversity is important. For all of us.

But let´s start a little bit slower- what does the word biodiversity exactly mean?

Biodiversity includes three diverent topics that are all related to each other:

• the divercity of ecosystems
• the variety of species
• the genetic multiple within species.

So far so good, but where is the problem? Why do we celebrate this day?

As I said in the beginning, up to 1 million animal and plant species are thretened and it´s getting worse and worse. We don´t really know how many species live on our planet but according to estimates it should be around 8,7 million.

Additionally to the big amount of thretened species, the biodiversity on our planet goes back a lot in the last few years what means that a lot of species just die out. And to be honest- that is really scaring, at least for me. Every year around 58.000 animal species die out.

When you take a look back in the evolution, it is totally normal that species die out, but if you focus on the amount of today, nothing is normal anymore. At the moment we have the largest species extincion since the dinosaur died out, to make it a little bit clearer.

With phenomens like the climat change, the human beeing is responsible therefore that the biodiversity on our planet is threatened. And that is really strange when you realise that the humanity is depending on biodiversity.
​
Biodiversity is important, for all of us, our food, our health and our existence in general.



Lioba Einhoff

Today is the world bee day. You maybe wonder why, because it seems like there are so much more important things than bees.
But most people do not know is that bees are not only responsible for honey. There are very important for so much more.

With around 25.000 to 30.000 species bees are the biggest group of pollinators and this means a lot.
Besides bees, other common pollinators are butterflies, moths, flies, wasps, beetles and some vertebrate pollinators like bats ,some birds and a few monkey species.
A few of those pollinators like bees, bats and hummingbirds are threaten by human activities and in general the diversity of pollinators is striking. This is not good for any ecosystem because around 95% of wild flowers and 35% of the world agriculture are relying on pollinators.
You see, if we would not have pollinators in our ecosystem the world hunger would be even bigger.

But why do we even have to save the bees? Why are they threaten and why are they dying?
Those questions are not very easy to answer,
It seems like there are a few reasons which leading to the “bee dying” especially when the reasons are combined.
One reason are insecticides, which a lot of farmers but also private gardeners using to prevent insect attacks on their plants.
Another reason is “the cocktail effect” which basically means that the bees absorb all the bad stuff from the air. For example the exhaust gases of cars and all the other toxic substance of the air and water.
So in conclusion the “cocktail effect” is not very good!
A third reason is the monopoly agriculture. Bees need biodiversity to survive and this is simply not given in the modern agriculture.
A few other reasons are  the dissection of biotopes, the climate change (because the bloom of a lot of flowers changes) and the light Pollution.

Maybe you realised one Things About all of those reasons?
Yes correct, they are made by us, humans.
So with our behaviour we put ourself in danger, because like I already wrote, bees are partly the reason for our food.
If their would be no bees their would be more than 30% less food in the world.
I think we should all agree on the fact that we have to save the bees!

But what can we do to save them?
You can stop using insecticides. Today there exist a lot of alternative pesticides which are not dangerous for bees.
In the summer when it is hot you can give them water so they have something to drink.
Another thing you can do is to plant crops which are bee friendly in your garden or if you do not have a garden you can also do it in a local park.
For the bees it does not matter where you do it.
It also helps to you buy honey from a local bee-keeper because then you support the bees around you and not the ones who produced your imported honey.
So, as you see there are a lot of different things that you can do to save the bees.

And to finish this article, here is one fact about bees which I find pretty amazing:
In their Lifetime bees fly so much that they circle the earth for 900 times. So with this nice fact: Bee aware of those problems and bee well!

​#Savethebees & #happybeeday

written by Johanna Dilling