Table of Contents
Introduction
"Little things mean a lot"– this tune went through my head when I was interviewed by four men and one woman before entering the medical school at Hebrew University, in Jerusalem in 1955. Among the many questions I was asked was how I planned to overcome the harsh conditions of being a wife and mother together with being a medical doctor. I was then eighteen years old.
The American song went around time and again in my mind. I truly didn't know the answer. Marriage and children were not yet in my scope/mind at all. I was on the verge of starting to sing this song in front of them, aware of the impossible situation it was going to be. Luckily, instead of singing I heard myself saying: "I think that if you could make it, I'll be also capable of doing it." I was accepted.
Looking back at my smart answer, I rebuke myself for referring mentally to the woman and not to the men. It was then absolutely clear to me that a question like this could be posed only to women and I didn't think it was wrong. That was the world in the 1950s.
Soon enough I found myself involved in ideological disputes with the medical school. At the time I was so naïve that I didn't understand the depth of my disputes: I raised a big noise about the systematic discrimination against female students –only a quota of 10% of the students was kept for females each year—and that I was not allowed to wear trousers at school even in the cold winter. The word “feminism” was unheard of then in Jerusalem, nor did I know that I was fighting a feminist fight. I thought that it is not fair, it is not just, and therefore I didn't agree with it. I was quite lonely in my struggle, which left me with a bitter feeling. With time, learning the hard way, I came to a better understanding of the importance of having friends to support me in my struggles. Today we call it sisterhood. Those things are big and they mean a lot.
Many years and many struggles went by. In 1988 I founded Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel). Led by a woman, it became a model of feminist grass-roots social leadership. PHR-IL was the first to introduce the concept of human rights to the Israeli public and policy makers, a concept that was not present before.
The model of PHR-IL was quickly emulated by others: within a year or two, new NGOs led by women were established. In PHR-IL women are leaders rather than laborers in male-led organizations. We celebrate our new voice every day since then.
The new women-led organizations were engaged in broad-based action for human rights, against the occupation, and in favor of social justice and equality, making it clear that Israeli feminist world-view and activism had widened its scope from struggling strictly for women's rights to a new capacity in which the whole world was theirs to change.
Another achievement of PHR-IL is the pleasant and friendly atmosphere among the staff. This reflects an organizational culture that embodies a spirit of sisterhood for women and men that has endured for 25 years and has managed to resist the dominant militaristic power-based nature of Israeli society. However, is still not a given but rather something that has to be nurtured, kept and protected every day in face of strong antagonist pressures in our society.
Solidarity is a guiding principle in our work with Palestinians and with other disenfranchised and excluded communities. We avoid a patronizing attitude, and reject the philanthropic approach.
Being a doctor, I am well aware of my power and “superiority.” It is the awareness of this power that made me realize that in order to do real good, to be true to my oath to “first do no harm,” I must always struggle against the temptation of paternalism, I must give up my preferential position by sharing power – by sharing information. We are creating an alternative and subversive potential for bonding that aims to replace the oppressive separation policy. As Australian Aboriginal Elder Lilla Watson said, “If you've come here to help me, you're wasting your time. But if you've come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
The connection between human rights and health cannot be ignored. PHR-IL aims to empower women in claiming their human rights as the only durable path to change in their health and their lives. Women who have general health problems—including mental health problems—in situations of human rights abuse cannot be treated only with medical aid. The abuse is a main cause of the problems and must be addressed directly for health to improve.
PHR-IL formed a monthly day-long Women’s Clinic run by women for women that has been held since 2008. Palestinian women are involved in the organization of the day, together with us. These clinics aim to empower women to claim their rights in general and access to health in particular. Educational health lectures are held to provide information on health issues. This didn't come easily. For five years I tried to convince the PHR-IL board (most of them men) that a female mobile clinic was profoundly necessary and important. I needed to raise the funds for it, which I did. Once the female clinic started and became a success its budget was covered by the PHR-IL's general budget.
Women in Israel and more so in Palestine are still have to fight for their rights. In Israel, unlike the growing involvement of women in civil society groups, there is no significant increase in the number of women in the political parties and policy-makers; and even our last elections showed that an increase of women MKs does not guarantee an increase of feminist thought.
I am still struggling for my place and voice everywhere, within my organization, let alone in the broad society. Changes come in small steps. But in spite of that – we women have moved on from the bad place we were in a half century ago.
— Ruchama Marton, M.D., 2013
Articles
[Articles follow in chronological order.]
UNTITLED
[Seventh United Nations International NGO Meeting on the Question of Palestine, August 1990]
Since the outbreak of the Intifada (December 1987), one can observe unprecedented political activity of women in Israel. This activity is mainly centered in protest movements and groups concerned with human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory. Women constitute a vast majority in some 100 protest movements which have been operating in Israel since the beginning of the Intifada. Women in Israel have translated their emotional and moral reaction to the crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory into political actions.
One organization, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-IL), is a model of women who move beyond the narrow sector of the struggle for women’s rights and engage in broad-based action for human rights, against the occupation, and in favor of social justice and equality.
PHR-IL created a new trend in Israeli civil society: the establishment of many new organizations devoted to human rights. Some of these are women’s organizations that are involved in a range of issues, not just “women’s issues,” as in the past, or related to organizations that are headed by women for the first time.
Modesty, lack of publicity, the absence of political propaganda, combined with persistence, diligence and efficiency characterize the political activity of women in Israel.
When working together in mixed protest movements, men and women, the women leave the political arena, the fame and glory attached to it, to the men. They themselves deal with the particulars of the political activity. The well-defined borders between the male and female activity in political parties and extra- parliamentary groups are still there.
In contrast to the variety of women's involvement in the extra-parliamentary groups, there is no increase in the number of women who are active in the political parties.
CONFLICT EXPERIENCES: THE MANY FACES OF VIOLENCE AND OF RESILIENCE
[Brussels, March, 2010]
Recounting PHR-Israel history is much more than just listing its actions, failures and achievement. Its foundation 22 years ago marked a dramatic turning point in Israel’s civil society. PHR-I actually introduced the term and concept of human rights where it was not present before.
PHR-I is a non-profit organization that struggles to end the occupation, the source of all human right violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, and for the realization of the right to health for all under Israel’s control. Today PHR-IL has more than 1,500 members, over half of whom are health workers.
PHR-IL struggles for women’s rights within the wider vision of social justice. Demanding state responsibility for medical care to victims of domestic violence regardless of their civic status and conducting an ongoing mobile clinic by women for women are just two examples of our work.
Even more dramatic is PHR-IL’s innovative way of bringing together the insight of feminism and the struggle for peace and social justice. This conjunction of efforts extends the scope of women’s involvement from relatively narrow women’s rights to a wider challenge to patriarchal conceptions in Israel, including marginalizing policies of women, ethnic minorities and low-income populations.
PHR-IL created a new trend in Israeli civil society: the establishment of many new organizations, led by women, devoted to human rights.
Examples of such organizations include the Public Committee against Torture, HaMoked (the Defense of the Individual), Bat-Shalom (Israeli and Palestinian Women for Peace and Social Justice), the Workers’ Hotline, the Women’s Peace Coalition, and others.
Personally, it was a dramatic experience from the outset. That at the time I could not put into words. In the most tangible way, we see how each day’s work brings change. It is an empowering experience of strength and capability, in spite of facing a massive, powerful, heavily-funded security system.
Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times in December 2007: “When men want to put down a powerful woman in a sexist way, they will say she’s a hag or a nag or a witch or angry or hysterical…. Some who disagree with a woman on matters of policy jump straight into an attack on the woman’s looks or personal life.” I have experienced this attitude many times.
At the beginning, government ministries didn’t respond to our letters for months. Army Generals portrayed us as extremely naïve, not to say stupid, trying to undermine our reliability. Being resilient and using foreign media and world policy-makers helped in changing this attitude.
PHR-IL had a significant majority of male physicians, but quite remarkably, men in PHR-IL learned to join in next to us instead of talking for us.
Our unswerving commitment to our Palestinian partners and those who appealed to us for medical assistance, holding our mobile clinic in the oPt during the first and second intifada, built up mutual respect and trust between us and the Palestinians in the oPt. Inside Israel, our relations with Israeli–Palestinians became even stronger after visiting the families of the Arab citizens killed by Israeli police in October 2000 and speaking out in their defense.
PHR-IL struggles on the political level for the rights of the refugees fleeing from Darfur, Sudan and Eritrea, and at the same time offers them medical services in our Open Clinic in Jaffa.
The stronger we became the more dangerous we were seen to the mainstream establishment.
The Israeli Medical Association (IMA) is a huge, wealthy and well-connected organization. Following one of our presentations against the involvement of physicians in torture, IMA’s chairperson said on 21 July 2009: “The activities of PHR-Israel constitute fertile ground for anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist anti-Semitism.” This man marked me personally as the main force leading this kind of activity. This might be seen as personal disdain between a man and a woman who are both leading organizations of medical professionals; yes, but actually it is a power struggle between IMA, as a part of the military establishment, and PHR-IL, which is an outsider organization fighting for human rights and just peace.
I wish to end my presentation by telling you of three women who contacted our offices. Fatum, a Palestinian, 27, had to surpass both the patriarchal Palestinian medical system that ignored her complaint and the violent Israeli bureaucracy until she could get the proper diagnosis and treatment. Alas, it was too late for her. Our doctors and staff, who fought for her treatment and who celebrated her birthday at an Israeli hospital, had to, then, fight so she could be returned in time to her home in Gaza to die at the side of her family.
Another woman was a migrant worker, misdiagnosed by a doctor at a private health insurance company. She was told she was incurable and was advised to leave Israel and die with her family. Our doctors diagnosed her correctly, treated her and represented her case so that the private insurance’s doctor will be brought to trial.
The third example is an Israeli woman couldn’t pay the co-payment for surgery that would save her hearing. We appealed to the ministry of health which admitted the co-payment to be too high and cancelled it.
By breaking the lines that divide women victims of ethnocentric and oppressive concepts, we are also breaking the concepts imposed by the mechanism of oppression. We are creating an alternative and subversive potential for bonding which aims to replace the oppressive separation policy.
Our approach tries to get to the root causes of evil, the deepest source or reason for pain and suffering, and then to work to try to change the origin of those wrong-doings. Of course this work is never done – we know that already.
I would like to thank the organizers of this meeting here in Brussels for inviting me. I hope to learn here a lot.
ACCEPTANCE SPEECH FOR RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARD
[Stockholm, June 2010]
Dear Mr. Speaker and members of Parliament, dear fellow Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award, Excellencies, dear friends:
In January 1988, less than a month after the outbreak of the first Intifada – the Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation – I gathered together a group of eleven Israeli physicians and we went to visit Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.
That visit was a shocking event. We witnessed first-hand the results of the Israeli reaction to the civil uprising: gun-shot wounds, people who had been clubbed about the head to the point of unconsciousness, youngsters with broken hands and feet, and more. Shocking too was the state of the medical facilities, especially when we compared it with the cutting-edge technological standards we were accustomed to in our hospitals inside Israel. Al-Shifa Hospital was a government institution, which meant it was under the supervision and responsibility of the Israeli occupying authorities. Why then – we asked ourselves – was it not of a similar standard to our own? Why the Palestinian doctors were constantly threatened on political grounds? This was the beginning of the Association of Israeli-Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights, which later changed its name to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.
More than two decades have passed. From a pioneer organization that introduced the concept of human rights to the Israeli public, we have evolved into a leading human rights organization. Founded by a woman, and led by a woman, we established a model of feminist grass-roots social leadership, one that was quickly emulated by others. Within a year or two following the founding of PHR Israel, new NGOs led by women were established; making it clear that feminist activism had widened its scope from struggling strictly for women's rights to a new capacity in which the whole world was theirs to change.
PHR-Israel is now a somewhat older, more established organization, but our commitment to our values has not faltered. We are as resolute in our action and advocacy for ending the occupation, in our struggle for the right to health of Palestinians living under occupation, and of all prisoners and detainees. At the same time we also widened our activities to protect and promote the right to health of the marginalized communities within Israel: migrant workers, asylum seekers, residents of the unrecognized Bedouin villages, the poor and those citizens of Israel who suffer discrimination. PHR-Israel works in the “back yards” of Israeli society, back yards that many don’t want to see, and don’t care about.
Indeed, in Israel today, the discourse of human rights has now become commonplace, yet the respect for human rights has not! Recently there is growing denunciation of members of our human rights community as traitors. Our demand for true equality, and our alternative world view to the militaristic approach in education and in policy making, is the main cause for that denunciation. The attack is multi-layered; it comes via legislation, the media, right-wing academics and NGOs.
Now is a moment of test; it is a moment where a human rights organization under threat should make its stand even clearer and more vocal than before. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel – I am sure – will rise to this task because of our moral and legal traditions of human rights, values of social justice, and principles of medical ethics. All these are combined with a feminist worldview of partnership and solidarity.
My way as a woman activist started long before I established PHR Israel, long before I knew what radical feminism was, or had had the chance to read some theoretical thinking. Back then, as a female soldier, I struggled against male-dominated militaristic standards. Later I struggled against the discrimination of female students in the medical school where we were asked to be grateful for the 10% quota allocated to female students. All these experiences and others served to train me for a life of activism and enabled me to found PHR-Israel and to give it this inherent belief that working for human rights must be done with and not just for the community.
We are part of the community just as we are physicians; thus our obligation to social justice and human rights impels us to raise our voice with the voiceless: the tortured victims, prisoners, and all the disempowered people and groups in our society.
We struggle against wrongs that stem from human conduct, rather than the illnesses caused by viruses or microbes. We invest in advocating for changing the system or policy that causes the suffering we encounter every day in our clinics and interventions. Our radical political work has influenced various aspects of the Israeli health system and we played a vital role in the Israeli High Court ruling against torture. Yet much is still to be done.
Solidarity is our guiding principle in our work with Palestinians and with other disenfranchised and excluded communities. We avoid a patronizing attitude, and reject the philanthropic approach. While engaged in direct medical actions for individuals in our mobile and open clinics, or while advocating for individuals whose rights are violated, we learn the causes of those violations. We commit ourselves to finding a radical solution and demand accountability from those in power.
We are constantly fostering critical thinking that empowers us against the temptation of the "bear hug" of the mainstream. Because, let me assure you, many wish to silence us by diverting us to charity or to humanitarian work which carries no political message. We do know that there is no humanitarian solution to humanitarian crises. Humanitarian crises, even if caused by natural disasters, can be better resolved by a just political action. In our region the disaster is man-made.
For all of us, PHR-Israel and the human rights community in Israel, the award comes at the right moment: We live in a society that chooses to live a life of deception: believing that Israelis are the only victims; that the long occupation is necessary for security; that we are a true democracy with no racism or xenophobia, no apartheid regime. Voices like ours are attacked so as to silence us. Your supporting voice might have an essential influence on public opinion and policy makers in Israel. The award empowers our friends, volunteers and members – without them our work would not have been possible.
For all of us, this award gives a moment of pride and recognition to lives of continuous struggle that are often rebuked, lonely and rejected. It is not an easy decision for a physician or nurse to join PHR-Israel. They are criticized by their peers for being "political," as if medicine can be a neutral profession. Health is used by the regime as a means of controlling its citizens, of undocumented people and Palestinians under occupation. It is through the right to health that we can best struggle against such control and oppression.
Today, when NGOs are being delegitimized, especially those advocating human rights for Palestinians under occupation or striving to achieve a more inclusive society, doctors might be hesitant to join us. The State becomes more and more ethnocentric, and democratic values are compromised. Israeli Palestinian citizens are marked as "fifth columnists"; asylum seekers as a danger to the Jewish character of the State; anti-occupation activists and human rights groups as a threat to the existence of the State, as if the only way to maintain Israel is via military control, oppression and humiliation of the other. The result of this well-coordinated attack is a restriction of the public debate that is so essential to any democratic process. Practically there is no opposition in Israel.
At this point in time the award not only gives recognition to past achievements, but plays a significant role in supporting our present struggle. I feel honored to stand here today, in the company of the other laureates. Being acknowledged as having similar resilience and achievements to theirs is the best reward I could have hoped for. Being one of you is extremely important since I myself, and PHR-Israel, are in great need of moral support and recognition.
I humbly accept this award in the name of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel’s wonderful and relentless staff, board, volunteers, and membership; in the name of our dear Palestinian partners; and in the name of all who support us. From Israel and from the occupied Palestinian territory I bring you back their gratitude, and their commitment to building societies that we will not be ashamed of, but rather proud of for their conduct towards human rights.
Let us join voices and be heard loud and clear. For silence is the language of complicity, but speaking out is the language of change.
Thank you very much.
WOMEN'S HEALTH FROM A HUMAN RIGHTS PERSPECTIVE
[With volunteer Tess Deegan, 11th International Women and Health Meeting, Brussels, Belgium, September 2011]
Introduction
Women who have health problems, including mental health difficulties, in situations of human rights abuse cannot be treated only with medical aid. The abuse is a cause of the problems and must be addressed directly for health to improve.
A number of groups in Israeli society have their rights abused and ignored; they experience significant health problems as a result. As is so often the case, it is women who suffer most from these abuses. In these groups women typically have less freedom to escape their situation, and rely heavily on family support networks. When the collective suffers, women suffer.1
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-IL) sees the rights of Palestinians, Bedouins, refugees and migrant workers curtailed daily in its work in health-care and advocacy. I will talk about some of the main problems and the projects that PHR-IL has created in response to them. A 2007 study found that holistic quality of life (QOL) standards are affected by political freedoms and self-determination.2 This suggests that a broad approach to the impact of rights abuse on health is useful. Undoubtedly, the psychological impacts of rights abuse are a significant component of QOL assessments.
Physical and psychological traumata, humiliation, lack of personal freedom, disintegration of social fabric and poverty are all components of health and mental health. It is artificial and arbitrary to conceive of health and mental health as two separate entities. The human being is one unit integrating body and soul.
I want to emphasize the importance of creating projects that not only provide health care, but enable women to have more control of their own health and demand their rights. Through empowerment we can break the cycle of poor health. Without empowerment and an emphasis on rights, humanitarian care is just a band-aid on a bullet wound.
Bedouin community
In the Negev desert in the south of Israel, Bedouin villages have existed since before the creation of Israel. Many are not officially recognized by the State. This means the majority of Bedouin people—citizens of Israel—do not have consistent access to electricity, plumbing, water, public transportation or medical services. PHR-IL estimates that 84,000 people have their basic rights denied in this way.3 Thirty-one percent of women and 20 percent of children in this group have chronic disease, equaling 58 percent of the entire population in the unrecognized villages.
The infant mortality rate is 12.2 per 1000 births, compared to 2.7 per 1000 births in Jewish communities. A recent article reports that “some 12 percent of Bedouin women giving birth at Soroka [a hospital in the Negev] have received no prenatal care at all.”4 There is a high rate of birth defects, poor nourishment and education for mothers and a lack of pre- and post-natal care.5 Mother-baby clinics that exist experience an insufficient number of specialists (in gynecology and pediatrics), limited hours of operation, no connection to infrastructure including electricity, insufficient access to laboratory services, and lack of medication and communication break-downs due to language barriers.6
Another PHR-IL report states that 80 percent of women in the villages do not receive access to health care. PHR-IL publicizes these shocking inequalities and lobbies the government for more services in the Negev as a part of a profound change of its policy. Importantly, we also partnered with Oxfam GB on a project from 2006 to 2009 that fostered greater health awareness among Bedouin women. The project began as a study group and moved into active advocacy, becoming an agent for rights in the Bedouin villages. Titled “Women Leaders on the Right to Health,” the group has conducted lectures for women and participated in a conference organized by PHR-IL in the Knesset to urge greater political action on this issue.
Refugee and migrant worker women in Israel
In the last 20 years the flow of people to Israel seeking work or asylum has increased. The number of victims of human trafficking has also increased.7 Refugees and status-less people in Israel have no public health insurance and do not receive basic health services.
Many refugees come to Israel from African countries and pay smugglers to get across the Sinai desert into Israel. PHR-IL runs an Open Clinic in Tel Aviv-Jaffa to provide some small level of health assistance.
In 2009 PHR-IL initiated a program of questionnaires for people who pass through Sinai in order to collect data on the hostage-taking, rape and torture that accompany the journey. This year we identified a growing trend of women seeking abortions at the Open Clinic after release from immigration detention. Many women have told of being raped prior arrival in Israel. We estimate that more than 80 abortions facilitated by the clinic in 2010 were requested by women who were sexually assaulted in Sinai.
Women constitute 58.6 percent of the patients in the clinic, despite the smaller percentage of women among work migrants. This may reflect the inclination of women to seek medical and mental help, or the stressful conditions of life and gender-based discrimination with which women have to cope. At least 10 percent of the female patients were exposed to violence with a sexual background. Apparently these numbers are under-estimations due to shame and cultural context.8
Alongside the abortion process, a PHR-IL partnership program offers classes on pregnancy and parenthood. Last year 443 women passed through this program.9
The Open Clinic has approximately 250 patients receiving psychiatric care from eight psychiatrists and over 50 psychologists and social workers in our volunteer team. The care is free of charge; however, other challenges exist for patients and care-givers: language barriers, cultural differences and reluctance on the part of some patients to talk about their ordeal.10
PHR-IL participates in the Sex and Gender Based Violence forum of the UNHCR. The right of women to be safe from violence is essential for their physical and mental health. We also distribute health education to brothels where the victims of human trafficking may be held. To achieve a long-term goal of eliminating NGO dependency, PHR-IL advocates for status to be given to refugees and migrants so that they can exercise their right to health care and education.11
Palestinian Women in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt)
Since 1967 the Israeli army has occupied the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. A World Health Organization (WHO) report delivered in May 2011 states that due to the occupation, “the Palestinian health-care system continues to face many challenges [including] restriction of movement and access to health services.”’12 Political, social and health rights are violated by the occupation.
To quote Giacaman et al.: "In the Palestinian case, th[e] collective experience of social destruction is especially relevant, where victimization for almost a century can only contribute further to intense feelings of desperation…"
PHR-IL runs mobile clinics in the West Bank each week to provide health care and show solidarity to Palestinian men, women and children alike. To target the specific disadvantage suffered by women, a women’s clinic run by women for women has been held each month for the past three and a half years. More than 800 women were treated in 2010, and more than 600 so far in 2011.
These clinics aim to empower women to claim their rights and access to health in particular. Educational health lectures are held to provide information on health issues. The Palestinian women are involved in the organization of the day. At a recent clinic in Bil’in, outside Ramallah, representatives of local women’s groups told about their political activism against the wall that cuts through their village. This kind of work is as important as the health care provided. The cause of the rights abuses by Israel will only end if the occupation is ended.
As Giacaman et al. write, "A just and permanent solution to the human rights abuses Palestinian civilians continue to suffer is…the only remedy to better heath and an acceptable quality of life.”13
Conclusion
The connection between rights and health cannot be ignored. All the groups mentioned above are exposed to severe socio-economical stress, to loss of family members and friends due to violent actions, and loss of property, status and freedom. Women are especially damaged by rape and violence. In other words – these people are suffering from human rights violations. PHR-IL aims to empower women in claiming their human rights as the only durable path to change in their health and their lives.
- Rita Giacaman et al, ‘Quality of Life in the Palestinian Context: An inquiry in war-like conditions’, Health Policy 81 (2007) 68.
- Ibid.
- PHR-IL, accessible at http://www.phr.org.il/default.asp?PageID=24&action=more .
- PHR-IL, accessible at http://www.phr.org.il/default.asp?PageID=134&ItemID=973 .
- Ibid.
- PHR-IL internal report 1.
- Note that figures on trafficking are difficult to verify. PHR-IL, ‘Information on the Health Rights of Migrant Workers’, accessible at http://www.phr.org.il/default.asp?PageID=98 .
- Ido Lurie, ‘Psychiatric care in limited conditions for Work Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers’ Israeli Journal of Psychiatry Related Science Vol. 46 No. 3 (2009) 172–181.
- PHR-IL internal report 1.
- PHR-IL internal report 2.
- Ibid.
- Fact-Finding report on the health and economic situation in the occupied Palestinian Territory, delivered to the Sixty-Fourth World Health Assembly, A 64/27, 16 May 2011, accessible at http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/AFE1CCE826FFDA4A852578950052B561 .
- Rita Giacaman et al, ‘Imprints on the Consciousness’ European Journal of Public Health Vol 14 No 3 (2004).