News

13/11/2012

KAMPALA, 13 November 2012 (PlusNews) - Uganda's parliament will, before Christmas, pass a highly controversial bill which seeks more stringent punishments for people engaging in homosexual acts and those perceived to be "promoting" homosexuality, says the speaker of the house.

13/11/2012

SARAJEVO / GENEVA (5 November 2012) – United Nations human rights expert Rashida Manjoo said that heightened domestic violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina is linked in many cases to the legacy of the war, and women and men suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and other war-related mental health problems as well as unemployment, poverty or addiction.

13/11/2012

Incomes have slipped to their lowest level in a decade since Madagascar’s 2009 coup d’etat, and, in parallel, domestic violence has sharply risen. 

12/11/2012

The Government of Sudan must immediately investigate the arbitrary detention and torture of freelance Sudanese journalist Somia Ismail Ibrahim Hendusa, who was found abandoned and in extremely poor health on a Khartoum street on 2 November following her arrest by Sudanese National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) officers on 29 October.

12/11/2012

Young schoolgirls seemed undeterred by the attempt to kill Malala Yousafzai, but parents in northern Pakistan are becoming increasingly concerned over their children going to school.

12/11/2012

Realizing women’s cultural rights can play a key role in ensuring that women’s rights are respected more widely. Farida Shaheed, UN expert in the field of cultural rights, proposed to shift the paradigm from one that views culture merely as an obstacle to women’s rights to one that seeks to ensure women’s equal enjoyment of cultural rights.

9/11/2012

“This occupation is the cruelest one that the Malian people have had to undergo, nowadays women are deprived of all liberties and even the choice of a husband is dictated to them by the occupying forces,” says a displaced woman* living in Bamako and originally from Timbuktu – a city occupied by armed groups today. “Even worse, the woman is married to several men against her will. Nowadays our children can no longer go to school,” she added.

9/11/2012

Fawzia Koofi is an Afghan women's rights activist and MP. She has already declared that she will run for president in 2014. In this interview with Martin Gerner, she outlines the two policy areas closest to her heart and explains why some Afghans view the timeline for the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan with trepidation.

8/11/2012

On 1 November 2012, human rights defender Ms Aminatou Haidar was physically and verbally attacked and threatened with a knife by Moroccan police in El Ayoun in a four hour long assault that left her car damaged. Aminatou Haidar is a renowned human rights defender and the Chairperson of the Collectif des Défenseurs Sahraouis des Droits de l'Homme – CODESA(Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders). Her human rights work focuses on advocating for the rights of the Sahrawi people and the independence of the Western Sahara.

8/11/2012

In a first of its kind initiative, more than forty Syrian women from all walks of social and political life, convened a working seminar in Cairo to form the “Syrian Women’s Forum for Peace” between October 30 and November 1 2012.