Bank Windhoek Socratic Forum - Press Release 12 June 2018

The next meeting of the Bank Windhoek Socratic Forum takes place on 10 July 2018 at Safari Hotel Namib 2 at 18:00. The topic of the meeting is Humiliation as a catalyst for regaining our common humanity and will be introduced by Dr. Sophia Kisting-Cairncross from Cape Town.Herewith a photograph and short CV of Dr. Kisting-Cairncross, as well as an abstract of her presentation.Sophia Kisting-Cairncross is the Executive Director of the National Institute for Occupational Health (NIOH), South Africa since 2014. She is an Occupational Medicine Specialist with extensive workplace experience in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety (OEHS) as well as preventive, promotive and compensation health services. She returned to South Africa in 2012 after nearly 7 years at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva. She was leading the ILO’s global Programme on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work and was, at the same time, the ILO/UNAIDS Global Coordinator for HIV/AIDS in workplaces. She played the lead scientific, technical and coordinating role in the development of a human rights protective international labour standard on HIV/AIDS which has been used in many countries to protect the human rights of workers living with or affected by HIV/AIDS. She had the significant opportunity to present the central human rights protective clauses of this labour standard ‘ILO Recommendation 200 on HIV and AIDS and World of Work’ to the United Nations General Assembly High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS in 2011.She has worked for over 20 years in rural and urban public health centres including 5 years in the Soweto Community Health Centres and Chris Hani Baragwaneth Hospital in Soweto, 8 years in Zimbabwe and 3 years in Namibia. She coordinated the WHO/ILO Joint Effort on Occupational Health and Safety in Africa for nearly 3 years with support from the World Health Organization and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in the USA. She worked for 12 years at the University of Cape Town, mainly in the School of Public Health in OEHS research and extensive clinical service delivery to workers sick from work.Prior to her appointment to the ILO in 2005, Dr Kisting-Cairncross worked systematically with Government Departments in South Africa’s post-apartheid constitutional democracy. This include serving on the Compensation Board of the Department of Labour; she played a catalytic role in the development and launch of the South African partnership of the WHO/ILO Global Programme for the Elimination of Silicosis; she did the background research for the Code of Good Practice for Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act; she was the medical advisor of the Parliamentary Committee that coordinated the ground-breaking Parliamentary Asbestos Summit in 1998 with extensive worker and community participation. The outcomes contributed to the end of the mining and use of asbestos (which is a cancer-causing agent) in South Africa.Her lead role at the NIOH is informed by international best practice and the realization of the importance of helping to build a gentler, more equal, more inclusive and more preventive world of work. She represents the NIOH in the deliberations for the establishment of the National Public Health Institute of South Africa (NAPHISA). The NIOH is a WHO Occupational Health Collaborating Centre and Dr Kisting-Cairncross provides leadership for the global project focussing on the informal economy and vulnerable workers. She was the global lead in 2017-2018 for the position paper of the International Commission for Occupational Health (ICOH) on prevention of TB among Health Workers. She strives for inclusive ways to help make the Sustainable Development Goals relevant for workplaces.She has particular interests in working with government departments, employers and workers to address concerns of workers with disabilities and workers who are vulnerable; help address ethical concerns in OEHS; finding positive solutions for workplace gender concerns; supports the outcomes of the ILO Domestic Workers Convention ratified in 2012 by South Africa; supports the fundamental need for greater income equity; addresses social justice concerns including prevention and compensation for work-related HIV and TB; supports greater education opportunities in OEHS for young Southern Africans; supports the protection of individual human rights at work and helping to nurture a culture of greater prevention through workplaces with a pro-poor emphasis. In 2003, the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health in the USA recognized her as one of ten influential women in OHS internationally. In 2016, she had the opportunity to address, during the ‘Africa Week’ of the European Union Parliament on Decent Work and Social Protection in the World of Work. In April 2018, she was awarded the 2017 Medal of President of the Convocation of the University of Cape Town for ‘making a significant contribution to society and public life’.Humiliation as a catalyst for regaining our common humanityHumiliation and the dehumanisation that often goes with it affect us in many different ways. For a number of historic reasons, it has had a profound impact on us in many countries of our beloved Africa. There is also the humiliation that comes with chronic poverty as well as the persistent and debilitating socio-economic inequality and lack of opportunities that plague many of our countries. We have the added problem of recovering from institutionalised racism in southern Africa which left deep scars on all of us. We are still dealing with many aspects of that legacy. The writings of Frantz Fanon, a humanitarian psychiatrist, provided hope and insight to many of us during difficult times. Through his nuanced intellectual analysis, he concluded that the human spirit can find ways to resist the psychological impact of the racial oppression and that violence affects not only the victim but also the perpetrator.As a medical doctor the bulk of my working life was spent seeing sick workers suffering from mostly preventable work-related diseases and injuries. These at times resulted in premature death. It is therefore incumbent on me to look at humiliation also through the prism of work, health and prevention. There is the humiliation and despair that comes from being too sick to work because of the lack of protection of basic rights at work. There is then the profound loss of dignity of not having a job and not having an income. There is the humiliation and irony of being sick from having worked and yet too poor to afford the requisite medical care. The medical anthropologist, Didier Fassin, in his book When bodies remember aptly describes how ‘history becomes physical reality and how biological facts become social facts’.All these different faces of humiliation and inequality can drive us to bitterness, despair, negativity and at times even violence. How then do we explore the possible alternatives and break the cycle somewhat imposed on us by living in a particular historic period? It has been my life experience that the humiliation and the grinding bad luck cannot contain the innate wish of the human spirit to seek a better life and pursue the quest for social justice and dignity. My main teachers on survival in difficult workplaces have often been women and men who were barely literate. They taught me about the indomitable dignity that comes from our common humanity. They are women and men who have proudly supported the protection of the individual human rights of fellow workers to ensure our common survival. I truly believe that we are all interdependent and can only live life at its ultimate best, attain greater equity and greater socio-economic justice if we collectively strive to rebuild and celebrate that elusive common humanity. It also translates into the beautiful spirit of the essence of Ubuntu which is so deeply embedded in the history of most of our countries in Africa.Recommended reading:Universal Declaration of Human Rights – United Nationshttp://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/When bodies remember – Didier Fassinhttps://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pp1dcRe-affirming our common humanity: Marking Human Rights Day to celebrate and support the enjoyment of health-related rights for allhttp://www.who.int/gender-equity-rights/news/human-rights-photo-story/en/Media Partners – Namibia Media Holdings The Namibian

Bank Windhoek Socratic Forum - Press Release 12 June 2018

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