News

8/3/2010

Africa: 30 days of advocacy against Witch-hunts

29 March to 27 April 2010 (Global): The witchcraft epidemic in Africa is fueled by religious extremism. Practitioners of traditional African religions, traditional healers, witch-doctors and Christian missionaries and religious leaders incite witch-hunts on this continent. There are comparisons to be made between Africas current witch-craze, European Inquisitions and American witch-hunts. Perhaps the lessons to be learned in Africa are the same as those that needed to be learned by Europeans and Americans; there is no culture without human rights. All men and women, including Witches, have the right to live without being falsely accused, assaulted, persecuted or murdered.

8/3/2010

Iran: Free ‘Mourning Mothers’ Supporters

The Iranian Judiciary should immediately release six women arrested in January and early February 2010, apparently in connection with their peaceful activities on behalf of the Mourning Mothers, Human Rights Watch said today. Mourning Mothers is a civil society group established in June 2009 by mothers whose children lost their lives in state-sanctioned violence following Iran's disputed June 12 election. In recent months many Iranians have expressed support for the group.

8/3/2010

Afghanistan: Women’s rights trampled despite new law

As the world marks International Women’s Day, ambivalence, impunity, weak law enforcement and corruption continue to undermine women’s rights in Afghanistan, despite a July 2009 law banning violence against women, rights activists say. A recent case of the public beating of a woman for alleged elopement - also shown on private TV stations in Kabul - highlights the issue. In January domestic violence forced two young women to flee their homes in Oshaan village, Dolaina District, Ghor Province, southwestern Afghanistan.

8/3/2010

Africa: Responding to Violence against Sexual Minorities

08/03/2010: We need to understand what it means to be heterosexual as well as homosexual, and that our sexualities affect whether we live or die. During this 54th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women on the occasion of the 15+year review of the Beijing Declaration and Platform, the Coalition of African Lesbians (“CAL”) reinforces that: LGBTI rights are human rights, that we are not claiming or asking for “special” or “additional” rights BUT that we call on our African governments to condemn the violence perpetrated against sexual minorities, to refrain from engaging in this violence and to take all measures to ensure the protection of sexual minorities, in particular, lesbian and transgender women subjected to violence.

8/3/2010

International Women's Day: Articulating a vision for women’s rights: Post Beijing +15

The Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, together with the other UN independent experts mentioned herewith, call today for a new vision of women’s rights informed by the lessons learnt from the 15 year review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action. Today International Women’s Day, has a special meaning while governments, civil societies, and UN agencies are gathered in New York at the Commission on the Status of Women to assess the progress made since the Beijing Platform for Action was adopted in 1995 at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

5/3/2010

Pakistan: Tribal leaders, private jails & false imprisonment of women and children

We have recently received information from Asian Human Rights Commission that a tribal leader of Sindh province has held three women and two children in his private jail and one woman has been continuously raped for more than three years. She has had two children whilst in custody. The Sindh High Court and the provincial police have been unable to recover the five persons from his jail. The tribal leader held a Jirga, a parallel judicial system of feudal society announcing the murder of one of the men. This man and his wife were declared as Karo (black male) and Kari (black women).

5/3/2010

UN: Disillusionment, Anger and Protest at 54th CSW

These meetings will take place every day for the duration of the Session at the New York Salvation Army building, several blocks away from the UN because there is “no room at the Inn”, that is, the UN building, where in previous years we always met. Is there some dark conspiracy that facilitates the process of making us women feel so unwelcome, so redundant, and so belittled, asks Margaret Owen ?

5/3/2010

Iran: Women Rights Defenders Continue Undeterred by Prison Detention

Today on a daily basis, personal memoirs of ongoing encounters of dictatorship and resistance in Iran are being written in print and in cyberspace by countless Iranian civil rights activists, scholars and women human rights defenders, writes Elahi Amani. In the process of finding a new transitional global identity, Iran state authorities have steadily continued in the use of legislative delays, reversal of legal means and arrests of dissidents, activists and journalists. Younger, as well as older, women human rights defenders, are now finding themselves victim to increasing intelligence policies of non-disclosure, intimidation and repression.

4/3/2010

Arab World: Interview with Karama founder

Questions for Hibaaq Osman, founder and director of Karama: 1. How have efforts to implement the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) in the Arab region evolved since Beijing? Has this been satisfactory? Since the adoption of the BPFA, there has been considerable progress throughout the region in meeting international standards that reinforce gender equality. In particular, the civil society sector has expanded, proliferating local organizations whose mission it is to address key issues that have prevented governments and other authorities from enacting, implementing and enforcing laws that protect women from discrimination and violence. This NGO component had been largely missing and now acts to directly respond to the needs of the local community and communicate these to national and international authorities. In particular, a renewed focus on empowering women and increasing their role in decision-making has been demonstrated.

4/3/2010

UN: Women's Agency Remains Politically Paralysed

A longstanding proposal for the creation of a special U.N. agency for women – officially called a “gender entity” – is apparently moving at the sluggish pace of a paralytic snail. The proposal – originally conceived by a high-level panel of U.N. experts back in 2006 – has remained a theoretical exercise for so long that a coalition of women activists is spoofing it in a fake electronic newspaper being circulated at a U.N meeting on gender empowerment here.