News

22/6/2015

Blood money marriage makes comeback in Iraq

BAGHDAD , Omar al-Jaffal Posted June 18, 2015

Women took to the streets of al-Mutanabbi Street in central Baghdad June 2, holding large banners denouncing fasliya marriage — the Arabic word for marriages arranged as compensation, through which tribal conflicts are resolved — which has surfaced in Iraq anew. The return of this type of marriage comes as a result of a frail state and the predominance of tribal values over social life, as well as the exacerbation of conflicts between Iraqi tribes in central and southern areas.

18/6/2015

A Bad Year for Yara Sallam in Egypt's Republic of Fear

06/17/2015

Brian Dooley, Director, Human Rights First's Human Rights Defenders Program

Sunday June 21 will mark one year since Egyptian human rights defender Yara Sallam and 22 others were arrested in the Cairo district of Heliopolis. She's been in jail since then, along with six other women who were arrested at the same time in connection with a peaceful protest. Sanaa Seif, sister of prominent jailed activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, is one of these six women. They have all been sentenced to two years in prison.

16/6/2015

Saudi Arabia – Women Traveling Alone without Permission of Guardians, Under Study

Tuesday 9 June 2015, JEDDAH

The Passport Department is currently drafting regulations that would see women travel without the permission of their guardians.

15/6/2015

Indonesia's Aceh bans women from nightspots after 11pm

10 Jun 2015

The capital of Indonesia's Aceh province has imposed a partial curfew for women that it says will reduce sexual violence but which critics say is discriminatory.

Internet cafes, tourist sites, sports facilities and entertainment venues have been instructed to refuse service to women after 11pm unless they are accompanied by a husband or male family member.

10/6/2015

Record number of women elected to Turkish parliament

Dilek Öcalan, niece of jailed PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan, among 96 women who won seats in Grand National Assembly

10/6/2015

Climate Change is Forcing Bangladeshi Girls into Child Marriage

JUNE 9, 2015, Dhaka

Sanjita had very little to say on the subject of how she felt about getting married. Maybe that’s because she’s 10 years old. She had married 18 days earlier, to a boy who is 14 or 15 years old—he works in a garment factory in Dhaka and as a rickshaw driver.

9/6/2015

UN report says Eritrea committed widespread abuses

08 Jun 2015

The Eritrean government may have committed crimes against humanity and was responsible for systematic and gross human rights abuses on a "scope and scale seldom witnessed elsewhere", a year-long United Nations inquiry has found.

8/6/2015

Egypt uses sexual violence as a tool of repression: Report

Arwa Ibrahim, Tuesday 19 May 2015

Egypt’s women and opposition face unprecendented levels of state-sanctioned sexualised violence, despite President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi's promises to uphold Egyptian revolutionaries’ calls for ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ and ‘dignity’ when he took over nearly two years ago.

8/6/2015

Turkey election: Kurds, women, gays put faith in upstart party

By Mark Lowen, 1 June 2015

For years it has been their ritual - women who lost children and husbands in 30 years of armed conflict between the Kurds and the Turkish state.I meet them in Diyarbakir - the final stop of our election trip across Turkey.Age and exhaustion are etched on their faces. One wears a necklace with a picture of her missing children. Another has a bracelet bearing the Kurdish flag."Turkey doesn't think we Kurds are humans", says Sakine Arat, 80, who lost four sons and one daughter in the fighting. "We've tried all the political parties but none sided with us. Now we've found one - the HDP - that treats us as equals. So we will vote for it."The People's Democratic Party (HDP) is the one to watch in Turkey's election on Sunday.Its roots and support base are Kurdish but it has broadened out, becoming a powerful voice of the Turkish left.

4/6/2015

JINHA reporters: they attack us because we expose them

June 02 2015

AMED – With a recent increase in threats against reporters for JINHA, Turkey and Kurdistan's only all-women and women-oriented news agency, JINHA reporters say those threatening them are doing so because they fear the threat that women-oriented reporting poses to male power.