Category Archives: Women’s rights and gender equality

Women’s rights groups fear FGM is rife among Sudanese refugees in Chad

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Practice banned in both countries but widespread among those displaced by Sudan’s civil war, say aid workers

Women’s rights campaigners have spoken of their concern over the spread of female genital mutilation among Sudanese refugees in camps across the border in Chad.

Both countries have outlawed the practice but it continues in secret. The UN children’s agency, Unicef, says that about 87% of Sudanese women aged 14-49 have been cut – one of the highest rates in the world. In Chad, the figure is 34.1%, though rates are higher in the south and east, which is where the camps for Sudanese people have been set up.

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Colombia outlaws child marriage after 17-year campaign

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Country closes 137-year legal loophole, becoming one of 12 in Latin America and the Caribbean to entirely ban marriage for minors

Colombian lawmakers have approved a bill to eradicate child marriage in the South American country after 17 years of campaigning by advocacy groups and eight failed attempts to push legislation through the house and senate.

After five hours of heated, drawn-out debate on Wednesday evening, lawmakers approved the proposed legislation, dubbed They are Girls, Not Wives, which prohibits the marriage of anyone under the age of 18.

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Iran announces ‘treatment clinic’ for women who defy strict hijab laws

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The move has been described as ‘chilling’ by activists and rights groups as arrests mount over dress code breaches

The Iranian state has said that it plans to open a treatment clinic for women who defy the mandatory hijab laws that require women to cover their heads in public.

The opening of a “hijab removal treatment clinic” was announced by Mehri Talebi Darestani, the head of the Women and Family Department of the Tehran Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. She said the clinic will offer “scientific and psychological treatment for hijab removal”.

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Fears grow that woman arrested for undressing in Iran could be tortured in psychiatric unit

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Protesters and political prisoners are being drugged, tortured and beaten in state-run institutions, say rights groups

Human rights organisations say they are gravely concerned that a young Iranian woman arrested for stripping down to her underwear could be subjected to torture after she was transferred to a psychiatric hospital by the authorities.

Amnesty International said it had found evidence that the Iranian regime used electric shocks, torture, beatings and chemical substances on protesters and political prisoners taken to state-run psychiatric institutions after being called mentally unstable. It said the situation facing the young woman was “alarming”.

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Four in 10 deaths in war zones last year were women, UN report finds

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UN Women says figure doubled in 2023 amid ‘blatant disregard’ of laws that left women and children unprotected

The proportion of women killed in conflicts around the world doubled last year, with women now accounting for 40% of all those killed in war zones, according to a new report by the United Nations.

The report from UN Women, which looks at the security situation for women and girls affected by war, says UN-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence also rose by 50% in 2023 compared with 2022.

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Breakdown in global order causing progress to stall in Africa – report

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‘Moral threshold coming down,’ warns Mo Ibrahim, as his index of governance reveals widespread decline in 10 years

The global rise of populism and “strongmen” has led to an increase in authoritarianism in Africa that is holding back progress in governance, the businessman and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim has said.

According to the latest edition of the Ibrahim index of African governance, 78% of Africa’s citizens live in a country where security and democracy deteriorated between 2014 and 2023.

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Iranian journalists who covered Mahsa Amini’s death face five years in prison

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Hopes of pardon dashed for Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, who were cleared of collaboration with US

Two young female journalists who were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for reporting on the death of Mahsa Amini have been cleared of charges of collaborating with the United States government but will still spend up to five more years behind bars, the Iranian authorities have announced.

Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi were arrested in 2022 after reporting on the death and funeral of Amini, the young Kurdish woman who died in police custody in 2022, sparking the nationwide Women, Life, Freedom protests.

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Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi calls for peace in Middle East from Iran jail

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Activist’s treatment at Evin prison has become even more severe since she was awarded prize last year

The jailed Nobel peace prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has marked the first anniversary of her award with a call for peace in the Middle East from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

The Iranian human rights activist said in comments to Italy’s Corriere della Sera: “Today, the dark shadow of war once again hangs over our beloved country. I hate war.

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Afghan women meet in Albania in ‘act of defiance’ against Taliban crackdown

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Organisers of international summit hope to create pressure to reverse laws including a ban on women speaking in public

More than 130 Afghan women have gathered in Albania at an All Afghan Women summit, in an attempt to develop a united voice representing the women and girls of Afghanistan in the fight against the ongoing assault on human rights by the Taliban.

Some women who attempted to reach the summit from inside Afghanistan were prevented from travelling, pulled off flights in Pakistan or stopped at borders. Other women have travelled from countries including Iran, Canada, the UK and the US where they are living as refugees.

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Afghan women sing in defiance of Taliban laws silencing their voices

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Women push back at law stating they must not sing or read aloud in public by posting videos of themselves singing

Afghan women, both inside and outside the country, have posted videos of themselves singing in protest against the Taliban’s laws banning women’s voices in public.

Late last month the Taliban published new restrictions aimed, it said, at combating vice and promoting virtue. The 35-article document, which includes a raft of draconian laws, deems women’s voices to be potential instruments of vice and stipulates that women must not sing or read aloud in public, nor let their voices carry beyond the walls of their homes.

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‘Frightening’ Taliban law bans women from speaking in public

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New vice and virtue restrictions offer ‘a distressing vision of Afghanistan’s future’, says UN

New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups.

The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.

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Fears grow for women’s rights activists jailed in Iran after 87 executions in one month

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Prisoners including Nobel prize winner Narges Mohammadi were reportedly beaten for protesting against a recent execution

There are fears for the fates of women’s rights activists imprisoned in Iran after a surge in executions since the election of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in July.

At least 87 people were reportedly executed in July, with another 29 executed on one day this month. The mass executions included Reza Rasaei, a young man sentenced to death for his participation in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Human rights organisations fear further executions in the lead-up the second anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in custody and the unprecedented nationwide protests that followed. Amini, who was 22, had been arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code before she died in September 2022.

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Indian women march to ‘reclaim the night’ after doctor’s rape and murder

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Protests reflect anger at 31-year-old’s killing, as well as a failure to address the daily struggles faced by many women

At the stroke of midnight, thousands of women holding flaming torches and blowing conch shells began to march through dark streets across the state of West Bengal.

The processions in the early hours of the morning on Thursday 15 August, India’s Independence Day, were part of several days of protest against the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor inside a hospital in the state capital, Kolkata, last week.

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Iranian woman reportedly paralysed in shooting over alleged hijab law violation

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Arezoo Badri was shot as police attempted to pull her over in the northern city of Noor

A woman is reported to have been left paralysed after being shot by Iranian police who were attempting to stop her car over alleged violations of Iran’s draconian hijab laws.

According to human rights groups and sources inside Iran, Arezoo Badri was driving home in the northern city of Noor on 22 July when the police attempted to pull her over after her car was identified as being on an impoundment list.

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Draft Iraqi law allowing 9-year-olds to marry would ‘legalise child rape’, say activists

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Opponents fear proposed bill could allow girls as young as nine to marry, erode women’s rights and give greater powers to clerics

A draft law in Iraq that would allow the marriage of girls as young as nine has provoked protests across the country, with women’s rights activists saying it would “legalise child rape”.

The Shia religious groups that dominate the political system in Iraq have been pushing to erode women’s rights in the country for more than a decade.

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UK ‘turning a blind eye’ to threats to kill Saudi activists living in exile

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Saudis living in the UK claim Riyadh is targeting them for speaking out on human rights and jailing of female activists

Saudi exiles living in the UK have spoken of threats to their lives and harassment over their support for improvements in human rights in their home country.

Saudi Arabia has been attempting to present itself as a reformed state since the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit squad at its consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

It has spent billions on sporting deals and promoting tourism in the country and was recently named host of a UN commission on women’s rights, despite what Amnesty International called its “abysmal” record on women’s rights.

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MPs in the Gambia vote to uphold ban on female genital mutilation

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Campaigners applaud decision not to repeal law in west African country with one of the highest rates of FGM

MPs in the Gambia voted on Monday to retain a law outlawing female genital mutilation (FGM), sparking joy and relief among campaigners.

Thirty-four out of 53 lawmakers voted to maintain the ban, which was introduced in 2015, aid workers told the Guardian. The remainder voted to repeal it.

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UK should restore diplomatic presence to help Afghan women, says aid chief

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Hugh Bayley says NGOs would also benefit as he releases report on impact of UK programme in Afghanistan

The UK should consider restoring its diplomatic presence in Afghanistan to support Afghan women and to help monitor the impact of British aid, a commissioner for the official UK aid watchdog has suggested.

Hugh Bayley, who visited Kabul in May, said he believed Afghan women and NGOs would welcome more western diplomats to represent the opinions of women to the Taliban as he released a report by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) on the effectiveness of the UK programme, which is the second largest operated by Britain.

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India’s supreme court to rule on new penal code permitting marital rape

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Rights groups protesting at Modi government’s view that criminalising sexual assault violates ‘sanctity’ of marriage

Campaigners angry that marital rape is not to be criminalised under India’s long-awaited new penal code have been promised a ruling on the issue by the supreme court next month.

Human rights organisations, including the All India Democratic Women’s Association, have been petitioning India’s supreme court to make it a criminal offence. The court has in turn asked the government for a response.

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Afghan girls accuse Taliban of sexual assault after arrests for ‘bad hijab’

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Reports surface days before UN summit on Afghanistan that will exclude Afghan women and debate on women’s rights

Teenage girls and young women arrested by the Taliban for wearing “bad hijab” say they have been subjected to sexual violence and assault in detention.

In more than one case the arrests and sexual abuse that young women faced while in custody earlier this year led to suicide and attempted suicide, reporters from the Afghan news service Zan Times were told.

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