News

2/1/2014

New Video Shows Purported 'Honor Beating' Of Kyrgyz Migrant Woman

By Charles Recknagel

Honor beatings are not a term usually associated with Internet videos. But the genre continues to creep onto the web with clips purportedly showing Kyrgyz migrant women in Russia being beaten by their male compatriots for allegedly shaming their nation.

By Charles Recknagel

The latest video, which first appeared on December 16 on the Russian-language Bilayv website and has since been posted on YouTube, makes for disturbing viewing.

Filmed by the attackers themselves, it apparently shows a young Kyrgyz woman cowering on the platform of an empty suburban train station in an unidentified Russian city and being kicked repeatedly in the back, stomach, and chest by two unseen men.

The sound accompanying the video is a string of curses and profanity in which the men accuse her of having sexual relations with non-Kyrgyz men, specifically Uzbeks and Tajiks.

31/12/2013

Special Report: Lebanon launches new campaign to combat violence against refugee women

Summary

The number of refugees in Lebanon has now reached 25 per cent of the total population. 78 per cent of the ever-increasing number are Syrian refugees, who currently number around 824,000, are women and children. 79,000 refugees coming from Syria are still awaiting registration at the borders. According to a recent report from Human Rights Watch (HRW), the most vulnerable are “disproportionately affected by Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV)”. A growing attitude amongst female refugees to return to the war-torn country they only just fled has been detected, as rape and sexual harassment has made life in Lebanon unbearable. (Beirut, 4rd Dec, 2013)

30/12/2013

Afghan Authorities Annul 7-Year-Old's Marriage-For-Money, Launch Investigation

Authorities in the Afghan province of Jowzjan have annulled the marriage of a 7-year-old girl whose father admits giving her away in return for the equivalent of $2,000.

An investigation has also been launched against the father, Ramadan, who like many Afghans goes by one name, as well as the groom and the cleric who reportedly presided over the ceremony.

The father blamed his action on poverty that has plagued his family.

23/12/2013

A Short Guide to Understanding Female Genital Cutting

Female genital cutting (FGC) used to be an issue that only feminists and anthropologists discussed. Over the past decade, however, the issue has been rising in the global agenda. Just this past month, a newKurdistani film on FGC made waves in the international media, a podcast about the issue was broadcast by the Guardian, and UNICEF held a global conference dedicated to ending the practice. Even with increased publicity around the issue, many global audiences do not yet understand the complexities behind FGC, and effective approaches to change the practice. Below, Dalberg Dakar’s Tania Beard presents an overview of FGC, with a focus on the situation in Senegal.

17/12/2013

Do we care enough about sexual violence?

JOHANNESBURG, 11 December 2013 (IRIN) - Nomsa*, 20, was on her way to register at a university outside Pretoria, South Africa, with four friends when the men grabbed her. "I was fighting with them," she said. They dragged her into a building, where the five of them took turns to rape her. The friends ran away and did not come back to look for her. The men took Nomsa's mobile phone.

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5/12/2013

WLUML networker Alaa Murabit receives the Hero Award at The Trust Women Award Ceremony in London

Announcing the Trust Women Award Winners

In September, we asked you to tell us about your women’s right heroes, activists and journalists who have contributed to the advancement of women’s rights worldwide showing courage, creativity and innovation. You gave us an incredible range of names, making the Trust Women Awards a truly global event.

We received 170 nominations from more than 140 countries, and at the winners were revealed last on the evening of December 3 at Trust Women conference in London. Libyan women’s rights activist Alaa Murabit and Indian investigative journalist Neha Dixit took home the 2013 Trust Women Awards.

3/12/2013

Poll misrepresents women's rights in Tunisia

Tunis, Tunisia - A controversial poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the status of women in Arab countries has stirred debate in Tunisia, long seen as the Arab world's leader in women's rights.

Greater religious freedom after the 2011 revolution and the rise to power of an Islamist party have raised complex questions about how these issues should be addressed in the new Tunisia.

While the poll addressed a multitude of issues relating to women's rights, critics argue its breadth came at the expense of country-specific nuances and, at times, factual accuracy.

2/12/2013

WLUML networker Yara Sallam awarded North African HRD Shield

We are extremely proud to announce that WLUML networker Yara Sallam has been awarded the North African Human Rights Defender Shield 2013.

Yara Sallam is a researcher on transitional justice at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). Yara previously worked as the Women Human Rights Defenders Program manager at Nazra for Feminist Studies (Egypt), a professional legal assistant at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) in The Gambia, as researcher on Freedom of Religion and Belief at EIPR, and as a research assistant at the Institute of Research for Development (IRD) focusing on women’s rights in Egypt.

2/12/2013

UN women's rights resolution passed despite backlash

UNITED NATIONS – A UN General Assembly committee has agreed a landmark first resolution on women's rights defenders such as Malala Yousafzai, despite a hard fought campaign by an alliance including the Vatican to weaken the measure.

A Norwegian-led coalition, which has prepared the resolution for months, had to delete language that condemned "all forms of violence against women" to get the text passed by consensus late Wednesday, November 27.

27/11/2013

Afghanistan: Reject stoning, flogging, amputation and other Taliban-era punishments

Afghanistan’s proposed reinstatement of atrocious punishments would mark a dangerous return to legalized state brutality, Amnesty International said today as it urged the authorities to reject such plans.

Public stoning to death, amputation of limbs and flogging are among the brutal punishments being put forward as draft amendments to the Afghan Penal Code.

“Stoning and amputation are always torture, and so is flogging as practised in Afghanistan. All these forms of punishment are strictly prohibited under international human rights treaties which are binding on Afghanistan,” said Horia Mosadiq, Afghanistan Researcher at Amnesty International.