[violence] domestic violence

Voters in North Carolina have approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage solely as a union between one man and one woman, in a defeat for gay rights advocates. It will become the 30th state in the union to enshrine a ban on same-sex marriage in its state constitution. Same-sex marriage has been illegal in NC for 16 years but can now only be legalised by another vote by the people.

This week's Panorama, Britain's Crimes of Honour, made for harrowing viewing. In the space of 30 minutes, the programme recounted horrific murders of women in the UK. There was video footage of Banaz Mahmod, the young Iraqi Kurdish woman from south London whose family murdered her and buried her in a suitcase after she was spotted kissing her boyfriend outside a tube station. There was the grieving mother of Laura Wilson, the teenager from Rotherham who was knifed repeatedly by her boyfriend, Ashtiaq Asghar. Then there was the wedding clip of Nosheen Azam, who came to Sheffield from Pakistan as a young bride and was trapped in an abusive marriage. She was found in her back garden, aflame. Nosheen survived but is brain dead, her body badly burnt. No one knows whether she set herself alight to commit suicide or whether it was attempted murder. Her father, who visits her in a care home, wiped tears from his eyes as he recalled telling her not to leave her husband, for the sake of her family's pride.

هناك غموض يلف عدد النساء العاملات في لبنان، وأكثر من ذلك عدد النساء المعيلات للأُسَر. الحقيقة أنّه في لبنان، من الصعب أن تستطيع المرأة، أيّاً كان وضعها الديني والاجتماعي، المجاهرة بإعالتها للأسرة، وذلك حفاظاً على التقاليد والأعراف التي تضع الرجل اللبناني، عربياً كان أو فينيقياً، في صورة الرجل المعطاء، المزود، والحامي عند الضرورة. مئات السنين مرت، والعديد من النظم الاجتماعية اندثرت، ونوعية الحياة انقلبت رأساً على عقب، ولا يزال على النساء وضع أنفسهن في حضن العائلة، وهي العقبة الأساس في إقرار قانون حماية النساء من العنف المنزلي، وحق المرأة في منح الجنسية لأولادها وزوجها، وأخيراً في إقرار احوال شخصية مدنية، قد تسهم في إنصاف النساء من جهة الإرث والزواج والطلاق.

The recent move by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Women Affairs (MoWA) to take control of women’s shelters is deeply worrying.  I have spoken to NGO workers who run these shelters, and they have been outraged by the new legislation. Over the past few years I have personally been able to see the work of five of these shelters out of a total of 14 set up around the country by NGOs after the Taleban’s fall. The shelters house hundreds of Afghan women and girls whose lives are at risk due to forced marriage, underaged marriage, and other forms of violence. Amnesty International urges the Afghan government to reconsider this terrible piece of legislation and, instead, recommit itself to protecting the women of Afghanistan and those courageous human rights defenders, many of them women, who are trying to counteract years of discrimination and sexual violence against the women of Afghanistan.