The National Black Lawyers Association in the United States has named Moyenda Mutharika-Knapp, the daughter of former Malawi President Peter Mutharika, among the top 100 Black Lawyers in the United States of America.
Mutharika-Knapp is among top 100 black in a country with over 1.3 million active lawyers.
“[National Black Lawyers Association} selects the most successful and influential lawyers with reputations for providing excellent legal representation in their respective practice areas. In sum, we are an African-American legal brain trust,” reads the Association’s website.
The National Black Lawyers Association has recognized Moyenda Mutharika-Knapp
Moyenda is the second-born daughter of Mutharika who also worked as a law professor in the United States before joining politics in Malawi.
According to the National Black Lawyers Association website, she is an attorney with in-house and law firm experience and has experience handling employer side employment law, commercial litigation, and long term disability matters.
She has also represented employers in employment law matters; plans, administrators, and employers in long term disability lawsuits; and companies in business disputes.
“I have defended employers in employment discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination cases in state and federal courts and before administrative agencies, such as the Illinois Department of Human Rights, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). I draft employment related documents, such as separation agreements, and provide employment counseling.
“Since 2005 I have been an adjunct professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, where I teach two courses: Trial Advocacy and Civil Discovery,” she says in her entry on the website.
National Black Lawyers Association has listed former President Professor Peter Mutharika’s daughter Moyenda Mutharika Knapp among 100 top Black American Lawyers in United States of America (USA).
According to National Black Lawyers Association website, Mutharika’s daughter Moyenda has in-house law firm experience, handling employer side employment law, commercial litigation and long term disability matters.
Moyenda who is admitted to bar in Illinois, also teaches trial advocacy and civil discovery as adjunct professor at Northwestern university Pritzker school of law since 2005.
There are over 1.3 million active lawyers in USA according to the American Bar Association.
One of the country’s legal experts, Ngeyi Kanyongolo says this is an achievement which speaks to high level of excellence and an inspiration to many lawyers especially female lawyers in Malawi.
The National Black Lawyers was created to celebrate legal excellence by promoting our attorneys as subject-matter experts, developing a strong national network of top African American attorneys, and facilitating the exchange of timely information to enable our members to maintain their status as leaders.
Daughter of former President Peter Mutharika, Moyenda has been selected among the 100 Top Black American Lawyers in the USA by the National Black Lawyers Association.
The development has excited many Malawians especially Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters who have taken to social media to congratulate her.
DPP Councilor for Blantyre City Soche East Ward Leonard Chimbanga wrote: “Congratulations to Moyenda Mutharika Knapp who is an American Lawyer of Malawi origin to be selected among the 100 Top Black American Lawyers in the USA by the National Black Lawyers Association.”
Concurring with Chimbanga’s remarks DPP’s legal advisor Charles Mhango wrote: “Congratulations to Moyenda for this achievement. This is no mean achievement in the legal profession, more particularly in the United States of America. We are all very proud of this achievement.”
Moyenda is currently based in United States of America.
Newswise — CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Since it’s discovery in 1910, sickle cell disease has been considered a death sentence for those that inherited it. But over the years, dedicated pediatric programs and research initiatives have greatly improved patient care and life expectancy.
Giving these patients the care they require still presents a number of challenges, including inadequate funding for sickle cell programs, lack of research, and limited access to healthcare.
Sickle cell disease, also known as sickle cell anemia, is an inherited red blood cell disorder that is woefully underfunded and under researched. The disease affects about 5,000 North Carolinians, predominantly African Americans and Hispanics.
Normally, red blood cells look like throwing discs. In patients with sickle cell disease, affected blood cells resemble the curved blade of a sickle. As these abnormally shaped red blood cells travel through the blood vessels, they cause traffic jams and block blood supply to organs and other areas of the body. The subsequent blockage can then cause inflammation, debilitating pain, fatigue, and many other health problems.
“People with sickle cell are superheroes,” said Little, a UNC Health hematologist who specializes in the care of sickle cell patients. “They’re managing hemoglobin levels that would make me swoon. They have to put up with fatigue that would stun the rest of us. But they’re always on the edge. And any little thing that triggers their sickle cell disease can be life-threatening.”
Medicine, Research, and the Lack Thereof
There have been a few medical advancements in the past several years to help prevent or reduce the production of sickle-shaped red blood cells.
In 2017, the FDA approved several treatments for sickle cell disease, including L-glutamine, crizanlizumab-tmca, and voxelotor. Some medications can run upwards of $100,000 a year. For families with more than one member with sickle cell disease, even the more affordable medications can be a significant financial burden.
Sickle cell disease is chronically under-funded and receives little awareness, largely due to systemic racial disparities, according to Little. Patients with other hereditary chronic illnesses, such as cystic fibrosis (CF) and hemophilia, are typically Caucasians and have access to pharmaceutical funding, sustained resources, and support registries, which have not been accessible to patients with sickle cell disease.
Of the scant research being conducted on sickle cell disease, much is concentrated on curative treatments like gene therapy and stem cell therapy. These therapies, although promising and ingenious, often involve long hospital stays and incur harsh side effects that may hinder young patient’s social lives and quality of life, according to Little and Boucher.
“There’s a lot of stuff we don’t know about sickle cell disease because we don’t have 50 years of registries informing us about patient care and quality,” said Little. “Not everyone with sickle cell is going to qualify for gene therapy or the stem cell cures. It’s like, we haven’t built a dock and the boat that’s coming for our patients is tiny.”
A Tough Transition
Patients are under medical care for their entire lifetimes. With more people living longer with sickle cell disease than ever before, patients will need to transition from well-established pediatric sickle cell programs to adult programs. The latter of which are sparse and lack the expertise and financial safety nets.
The transition for pediatric to adult programs can be particularly risky for young adult patients because they lose their long-standing connection with their pediatric providers. Lapses in medications, forging new patient-provider relationships, and lack of healthcare access can be incredibly stressful for these patients.
With many sickle cell programs lacking specific transition programs, providers do their best to communicate with one another and prepare patients for their transition well ahead of time.
“The more we do to try either to treat or prevent sickle cell disease while they are kids, the better off they’ll go to the adult world,” said Boucher. “We work really closely with the adult programs to have this transition process go as well as it can, but the more resources we have and the more we do upfront, the better.”
Because North Carolina is a large state, it can be challenging for patients to quickly access the care they require; the major sickle cell programs are in the Triangle region.
For example, patients in UNC’s Comprehensive Sickle Cell Disease program typically travel 1.5 hours for their medical care on average. To alleviate the issues with healthcare access, many providers are travelling to satellite clinics during the work week or attending community outreach events.
“We need to go to the patient instead the other way around,” said Boucher. “Because North Carolina is such a huge state, I had a child come for a special transfusion who had to drive three hours one way to get to me.”
How to Help
Sickle cell disease providers, like Boucher and Little, rely heavily on funding from the Governor’s NC Appointed Council on Sickle Cell Disease and Other Blood Disorders and other state funding for outreach and longitudinal care. But more is needed to help their patients thrive.
On September 23, the UNC Comprehensive Sickle Cell Program is hosting a large-scale fundraiser to support Pediatric to Adult Transition programs in our North Carolina clinics and the Malawi Sickle Cell Clinic. The Full Court Press for Sickle Cell Basketball Tournament Fundraiser will be providing food, a blood drive, a bone marrow drive, and a knock-out basketball tournament on the UNC-Chapel Hill practice court.
Patients with sickle cell disease need blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants fairly often. African Americans are much more likely to be a blood or bone marrow match for someone with sickle cell disease, however, African Americans are less likely to donate blood or sign up for the bone marrow registry, making it much harder for sickle cell patients to have a match and get the care that they need.
“We are all part of the sickle cell community, not just the family members,” said Little. “These are North Carolinians, our neighbors. These are children and young adults, who are suffering more than you know and we should support them. Anything we can do to support these young people who are struggling, I’m all for it!”
SOUTH BEND — Kelly Burgèt didn’t have to nudge the culture-hungry audience. Not much.
“It’s not what you can or cannot do,” she said, urging many dozens of people to stomp and swing with her local West African dance troupe, UZIMA!, as they stepped down from the stage to the blocked-off pavement of St. Louis Boulevard. “It’s about all of us coming together to celebrate each other.”
The crowd immediately joined the dance circle Saturday as global flavors filled Howard Park for the city’s new Fusion Fest.
Under the North America tent, an African American singer crooned the late Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville,” and people in the audience mouthed along.
The two-day fest debuted Saturday as large crowds mellowed out with music, crafts and food for each continent grouped under brilliant, fancifully patterned shade tents.
Food was a star. After all, this is a reincarnation of the beloved, food-centered Ethnic Festival that ran from 1974 to 2004.
John Pangani dished up jerk chicken, meat pies, plantains and other spicy goodness that, on his trailer, was labeled “Taste of Caribbean and Beyond.” But Pangani is a clever purveyor of his own culture. This cuisine blends flavors and styles from his native Malawi, a small southern African country, and the proceeds here all benefit primary schools and sanitation projects in Malawi through his Pangani Foundation.
Tamara Martin of South Bend was ordering some of it. As she recalled memories of the Ethnic Festival, she found a fondness for the new Fusion Fest. She liked the attention to safety, with metal detectors at the two entrances. She felt it’s more family friendly, too, because it seemed there was more room for kids and strollers and more places to rest and eat.
“South Bend is very diverse,” she reflected. “We’re all here to respect each other. This is a good way to do it. It’s important because we’re more accepting of cultures and ethnicities (than in the 1970s and 1980s). I feel like there’s no division here. People are talking with each other, no matter what race they are.”
“I’m impressed that there’s this much diversity in this small town,” Irais Ferreira said, having danced with her 5-year-old daughter, Mia, underneath the colorful big tent of South American cultures as the local Latin-soul fusion band Lalo Cura played on stage. “I want to show my children.”
Having just moved to South Bend two months ago, Ferreira came with her husband and three kids, ages 1 to 5, all wearing the colorfully embroidered shirts of their native Mexico.
Michelle Arias, 25, who came from Venezuela two years ago, emerged from paddling on the 20-seat dragon boat on the St. Joseph River — maybe her second time on any kind of boat — and said, “That was amazing.”
Now living in Elkhart, she laughed, saying she felt like she almost tipped (likely not on the big canoe) and got splashed. The boat, which the city of Fort Wayne has used to expose more people to its rivers, gives a new view of river life. Arias saw plants in the water and a bobbing apple (‘tis the season).
Tulin Sahin Babaoglu, of Mediterranean Michiana, drizzled an iridescent red-purple beet sauce over a sampler dish that she was serving.
Her husband, Serhan Babaoglu, said they are from Istanbul but now live in South Bend. They normally serve in local farmers’ markets. He praised the fest for being well organized, saying, “You can tell the organizers really care about the vendors and the people’s experience.”
“It’s colorful, it’s vibrant,” he said of the fest. “Everybody seems happy and open to trying new things.”
Grace Baker, 35, of South Bend had to try the Babaoglus’ food. She had made a couple of short visits to Istanbul when she’d studied in Europe during college.
“I just love the food, and anytime I’m around it, I want to try it,” she said of Mediterranean cuisine.
And because she works in restaurants, she added, “We need to support these places so they can have brick and mortar shops. We need people in numbers. Bring this energy.”
Jolene Coates of South Bend nibbled Saturday on warm plantains and shredded cabbage from the Caribbean. She relished the shade tents and breeze — something that the often-hot Ethnic Festival wasn’t known for, as she recalled — and liked Fusion Fest well enough to add, “I want to come back to Africa tomorrow.”
South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.
A Group photo of participants of the regional conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear-free-zone in Central Asia held on August 29, 2023. Credit: Jibek Joly TV Channel
ASTANA, Kazakhstan, Sep 7 2023 (IPS) – Exactly 32 years ago, on September 29, 1991, Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union, made a historic decision that would alter its fate. On that day, Kazakhstan permanently closed the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site, defying the central government in Moscow. This marked the start of Kazakhstan’s transformation from a nuclear-armed state, possessing the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal at the time, to a non-nuclear-weapon state. Kazakhstan’s audacious move to eliminate its nuclear weapons was rooted in a profound commitment to global disarmament, setting an inspiring precedent.
Eighteen years later, in 2009, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution, led by Kazakhstan, designating August 29 as the International Day Against Nuclear Tests. This day serves as a solemn reminder of the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons and underscores the urgent imperative for disarmament.
In a world where the threat of nuclear weapons being used again remains a grim reality, a pivotal question looms: Can we genuinely aspire to a world free of nuclear arms? To delve deeper into this pressing concern and comprehend the menace posed by nuclear weapons testing and deployment, we interviewed Karipbek Kuyukov and participants of the “Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons and the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone” regional conference. This conference, organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan in partnership with the Center for International Security and Policy (CISP), Soka Gakkai International (SGI), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), took place in Astana, Kazakhstan to commemorate this year’s International Day Against Nuclear Tests.
Karipbek Kuyukov is an armless painter from Kazakhstan, and global anti–nuclear weapon testing & nonproliferation activist. Credit: Jibek Joly TV Channel
One of the most poignant moments during the conference came from Dmitriy Vesselov, a third-generation survivor of nuclear testing. He provided a heartfelt testimony about the profound human toll exacted by nuclear testings on his family and the broader community. The nuclear tests conducted at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site over four decades unleashed explosions 2,500 times more potent than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The repercussions of these tests have echoed through generations, inflicting severe health problems and untold suffering.
Kuyukov, a renowned Kazakh artist born without hands due to radiation exposure in his mother’s womb, has devoted his life to raising awareness about the horrors of nuclear testing. His powerful artwork, created using his lips or toes, depicts the survivors of nuclear tests and serves as a poignant tribute to those who perished. Kuyukov’s unwavering commitment reflects the indomitable human spirit in the face of unimaginable adversity.
Dmitriy Vesselov’s testimony shed light on the ongoing challenges faced by survivors. He candidly shared his struggles with health issues, including acromioclavicular dysostosis, a condition severely limiting his physical capabilities. Vesselov expressed his deep concern about the potential transmission of these health problems to future generations. Consequently, he has chosen not to have children. The conference underscored the imperative of averting the repetition of history by delving into the past tragedies inflicted by nuclear weapons testings.
Hirotsugu Terasaki, Director General of Peace and Global Issues of SGI, commenting on the event said “I believe that this regional conference is a new milestone, a starting point for representatives from five countries of Central Asia to discuss how we can advance the process toward a nuclear-weapon-free world, given the ever-increasing threat of nuclear weapons.”
Terasaki observed that the international community is actively deliberating Articles 6 and 7 of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), mandating state parties to provide support to victims and address environmental remediation. He accentuated Kazakhstan’s pivotal role as a co-chair of the working group central to these discussions.
Kazakhstan does provide special medical insurance and benefits to victims of nuclear tests. However, these benefits are predominantly extended to individuals officially certified as disabled or a family member of those who succumbed to radiation-related illnesses. Numerous victims, like Vesselov, who do not fall within these categories, remain ineligible for assistance.
Despite his daunting challenges, Mr. Vesselov maintains an unwavering sense of hope. He hopes that his testimony will serve as a stark reminder of the perils of nuclear weapons and awaken global consciousness regarding the dangers posed by even small tactical nuclear weapons and the specter of limited nuclear conflicts. Ultimately, his deepest aspiration, shared by all victims of nuclear weapons, is that the world will never bear witness to such a devastating tragedy again.
As Kazakhstan assumes its role as President-designate of the third Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW, it reaffirms its steadfast commitment to global peace and disarmament. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s resolute words resonate with the sentiment of a nation that has borne the scars of nuclear testing: “Such a tragedy should not happen again. Our country will unwaveringly uphold the principles of nuclear security.”
At the conference, member states of the Treaty of Semipalatinsk were encouraged to support Kazakhstan in this endeavor, and in its efforts to represent the Central Asian region’s contribution to nuclear disarmament, through attending the second Meeting of States Parties of the TPNW, at least as observers, which will take place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York between 27 November and 1 December this year, and by signing and ratifying the TPNW at the earliest opportunity.
In a world still grappling with the looming specter of nuclear devastation, Kazakhstan’s journey from a nuclear test site to a leading advocate for disarmament serves as a beacon of hope. Kazakhstan’s unwavering commitment to peace stands as a testament to the enduring legacy of a nation that once bore the weight of nuclear tests and now champions a safer, more secure world for all.
Katsuhiro Asagiri is President of INPS Japan and Kunsaya Kurmet-Rakhimova is a reporter of Jibek Joly(Silk Way) TV Channel.
