{"id":80893,"date":"2018-09-11T14:57:10","date_gmt":"2018-09-11T21:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=80893"},"modified":"2018-09-11T14:57:10","modified_gmt":"2018-09-11T21:57:10","slug":"sri-lankan-women-sell-kidneys-to-repay-loans-un-expert-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/09\/11\/sri-lankan-women-sell-kidneys-to-repay-loans-un-expert-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan Women Sell Kidneys to Repay Loans, UN Expert Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-header post-tp-1-header\">\n<div class=\"single-featured\">\n<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy The Globe Post<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<figure>Sri Lankan war widows and women in former conflict zones are being forced to sell their kidneys to pay loan sharks.<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"entry-content clearfix single-post-content\">\n<p>Sri Lankan war widows and women in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theglobepost.com\/2018\/06\/13\/sri-lanka-war-compensation\/\">former conflict zones<\/a>\u00a0are being forced to sell their kidneys to pay loan sharks, a U.N. expert said Tuesday, urging government intervention.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky<\/strong>, the U.N.\u2019s independent expert on effects of debt on human rights, said that debt collectors were also demanding sexual favors.<\/p>\n<p>Women are at times exposed to psychological and physical violence by these collectors \u2026,\u201d he said in a statement after a visit to the island nation.<\/p>\n<p>I have also learned of cases of borrowers who have tried to sell their kidneys for money to repay loans,\u201d he said without elaborating.<\/p>\n<p>Sri Lanka is home to tens of thousands of war widows nine years after the 37-year civil conflict ended, many of them forced to use small microfinance\u201d loans to survive.<\/p>\n<p>Local media reports have said that dozens of indebted women in the battle-scarred north, which is also in the grip of drought, have committed suicide.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bs-irp left bs-irp-thumbnail-1\"><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Less than two months ago the government waived debts for 200,000 women who were unable to repay loans and\u00a0capped lending rates at 30 percent.<\/p>\n<p>But Bohoslavsky said that Colombo should go further and write off debts for men as well as women and impose tougher rules for lending.<\/p>\n<p>Official figures show that total outstanding microfinance loans amount to about 9 billion rupees ($56.25 million).<\/p>\n<p>Sri Lanka\u2019s economy grew at 3.1 percent in 2017, its slowest rate in 16 years, but is forecast to expand by five percent this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy The Globe Post Sri Lankan war widows and women in former conflict zones are being forced to sell their kidneys to pay loan sharks. Sri Lankan war widows and women in\u00a0former conflict zones\u00a0are being forced to sell their kidneys to pay loan sharks, a U.N. expert said Tuesday, urging government intervention. Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}