Category Archives: Women’s rights and gender equality

‘Open the schools’: Afghan girls protest in Kabul for right to education

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Two dozen girls and women react to Taliban’s decision to shut secondary schools to girls across Afghanistan

Women and girls staged a protest near the Taliban’s ministry of education in Kabul on Saturday, calling on the group to reopen girls’ secondary schools in Afghanistan.

The protesters chanted: “Education is our right – open the doors of girls’ schools!” as armed Taliban members looked on. They held banners that said: “Education is our fundamental right, not a political plan” as they marched for a short distance. They dispersed when Taliban fighters arrived at the scene later.

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Taliban U-turn over Afghan girls’ education reveals deep leadership divisions

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A lack of teachers and school uniform issues blamed for school closures but confusion is a sign of differences in vision for Afghanistan’s future

Earlier this week, girls across Afghanistan arrived for lessons on the day secondary schools were due to open for them for the first time since the Taliban seized power. They were told to go home, and informed schools would remain shut indefinitely.

As international outrage grew at the U-turn, the official Taliban response was confused and contradictory. The group blamed a lack of teachers on the closures and said they first needed to create an appropriate environment for girls to study, and decide on appropriate uniforms.

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Protests in Sudan after alleged gang-rape of young woman by security forces

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Women fear use of sexual violence as a ‘tactic’ against those protesting the coup, after attack on 18-year-old in Khartoum

Demonstrations took place across Sudan on Tuesday in protest at the alleged gang-rape of a teenager by security forces.

The 18-year-old said she was attacked in Khartoum on Monday by up to nine men dressed in the uniforms of the security forces involved in dispersing regular protests held across Sudan since October’s military coup.

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‘Women of the wild’: the platform giving India’s nature experts a voice

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Frustrated by a lack of female representation, film-maker Akanksha Sood Singh set up an Instagram account to showcase ‘the untold stories of women working for science and nature’

“I wish these things wouldn’t happen to anyone,” says Akanksha Sood Singh, a wildlife film-maker based in Delhi. “But if it has happened, this is a safe space for women to come and to share their experiences.”

The safe space Sood Singh is referring to is the Instagram account Women of the Wild – India, which showcases “the untold stories of women working for science and nature”. The platform gives them a chance to promote their expertise, but also somewhere to share their experiences of working in what are often male-dominated fields where sexual harassment can often feature.

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Afghan journalist Zahra Joya among Time’s women of the year

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Now a refugee in the UK, Joya and the Rukhshana Media agency defied threats to report on life for women under the Taliban

The Afghan journalist Zahra Joya has been named as one of Time’s women of the year 2022 for her reporting of women’s lives in Afghanistan through her news agency, Rukhshana Media.

Now living as a refugee in the UK, Joya continues to run Rukhshana Media from exile, publishing the reporting of her team of female journalists across Afghanistan on life for women under Taliban rule.

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‘When I surf I feel so strong’: Sri Lankan women’s quiet surfing revolution

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Women and girls have challenged conservative attitudes in the hallowed surf spot of Arugam Bay

Growing up in a small fishing village along the east coast of Sri Lanka, Shamali Sanjaya would often sit on the beach and look out at the boisterous waves. She would watch in envy as others, including her father and brother, grabbed surfboards, paddled out into the sea and then rode those waves smoothly back to shore. “I longed for it in my heart,” she said.

But as a local woman, surfing was strictly out of bounds for her. In Sri Lanka’s conservative society, the place for women was at the home and it was only the men, or female tourists, who were allowed to ride the hallowed waves in Arugam Bay, considered Sri Lanka’s best surf spot.

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To end FGM, the UK must protect girls everywhere, not just in Britain | Charlotte Proudman

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British women and girls are still being cut abroad and foreigners who are vulnerable are denied asylum by the UK

‘But why should we care about a practice that is being performed overseas?” It was a blunt question put to me by an audience member at a conference on female genital mutilation. Should we care because of a commitment to human rights? Our collective duty to prevent suffering? We have a moral obligation to end the practice in Britain and also to focus efforts on eliminating it globally.

After spending many years researching FGM, I have spoken to women who vehemently support it and those that actively resist it. If we are going to end FGM, it is important that we hear all women’s voices, however uncomfortable that may make us.

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Tycoon’s son sentenced to death in Pakistan in high-profile rape and murder case

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Zahir Jaffer tortured and beheaded Noor Mukadam, in July last year, in case that sparked outrage over violence against women

A court in Islamabad has sentenced to death the tycoon’s son who raped and murdered Noor Mukadam, a case that sparked outrage in Pakistan.

Mukadam, 27, the daughter of a former Pakistani diplomat, was held captive, tortured and beheaded in July last year by Zahir Jaffer, a member of a well-known industrialist family.

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‘House of love’: the calm, creative space changing young lives in Karachi

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In Lyari, a slum notorious for violence in Pakistan’s most populous city, Mehr Ghar offers young people a safe place to hang out and study – and, for many, an alternative path to gang life

Living in Lyari was like living on the frontlines of a war, says Nauroz Ghani, who grew up in the Karachi slum notorious for its bloody gang battles. So used to the constant gunfire, he says he would “become restless if a day passed by without hearing the sound of a firing”.

“My teenage years were lost to violence,” says Ghani, 24. “I had no interest in getting an education. Instead, I was attracted by their guns and activities.” He saw dead bodies on the street and one boy was killed in front of him. “All of us who lived during those days have such memories. We lived in terror, but it had become habitual.”

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Kabul to California: how the ‘hip-hop family’ mobilised for young Afghans

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With breakdancers, artists and parkourists facing a bleak future under the Taliban, a global network stepped in to help, drawing on the activist spirit of rap culture

A veteran of the hip-hop scene and internationally celebrated breakdancer, Nancy Yu – AKA Asia One – has her fair share of people contacting her looking for advice. But the message she received in 2019 from a young Afghan was a little different.

Frustrated by his breakdancing crew’s inability to get visas to perform internationally, Moshtagh* was wondering if Asia could help. “He felt they were really good, but they felt, like, invisible to the world,” she says. “I liked him. He wasn’t trying to bug me or say ‘we need this right now’ … He seemed rather humble and honest.”

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Greta stands with Sami and Navalny on trial again: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico

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Tigrayan soldiers accused of raping and killing civilians in Ethiopia’s civil war

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New Amnesty report details ‘mounting evidence’ of repeated war crimes including gang-rape, summary killings and looting

Tigrayan soldiers killed civilians and gang-raped women and girls in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region, a human rights organisation has claimed, in the latest accusation of atrocities made against fighters engaged in the country’s civil war.

Troops with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) shot dead at least 24 people in the town of Kobo in one day last September, according to Amnesty International.

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‘Men must be involved in the fight against girls being cut, it’s a violation’

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Female genital mutilation cannot be considered solely a ‘women’s issue’ if it is to be stamped out by 2030, say male campaigners in Guinea, Somalia, Kenya and Nigeria

There is a case from Dr Morissanda Kouyaté’s career that stays with him.

In 1983, Kouyaté, then 32, was working at a village hospital in Guinea when 12-year-old twins, Hassantou and Housseynatou, were brought in. Through wails, their relatives told Kouyaté that earlier that day, the girls had been taken into the bush to be submitted to genital mutilation. Now, they were barely conscious and bleeding heavily.

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How $10 radios and taxi bikes are helping to end the mutilation of girls

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Across the continent, young Africans are using their unique local knowledge and bargaining power to challenge beliefs about female genital mutilation

It took courage for Ayodeji Bella to raise the subject of female genital mutilation in her rural community in southern Nigeria. She knew local chiefs were key to challenging beliefs around the practice but when Bella, who was cut at five, broached the issue with an elder from her village, she was rebuked.

“I was young and unmarried and they wouldn’t take me seriously.”

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Hiding from the cutters: the fight to save girls from mutilation in Kenya

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As girls are paraded through Kuria’s streets in the school holiday cutting season, hundreds more are hidden by a network of neighbours working to change attitudes on FGM from the ground up

Half rising from the plastic white chair, he jabs a finger toward a girl and her school friends sitting across the circle from him. “She will have a future,” says Patrick Ikware, almost shouting. “This cult is diminishing, but to eliminate it, we need to substitute education, send our daughters to school and block our ears to the elders.”

The handful of others sitting on mismatched chairs on the grass outside the school in Masaba nod. A parents’ meeting held for those opposed to female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice almost universal among women in the Kuria districts of Migori county, western Kenya, is sparsely attended.

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Girls should be educated, not mutilated. The cutting of women must end, now | Waris Dirie

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Female genital mutilation is about the subjugation of women. But I am optimistic about ending it in my lifetime

It is down to sheer ignorance that the misogynistic practice of female genital mutilation still exists in the world. In the UK, for example, FGM has been banned since 1985, but the country’s first court conviction occurred only in February 2019. The truth is, FGM will continue as long as there is inequality between men and women. It is about power and oppression, and its only purpose is to subjugate the woman and her sexuality to the man. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

The UN has a stated goal of eliminating FGM by 2030. Unfortunately, this is pure announcement policy. I worked as a UN special envoy from 1997 to 2003 and came to realise that the organisation is not doing what it should. That disappointed me and is why I started my own organisation, the Desert Flower Foundation. And, in my opinion, we are doing a better job than the UN.

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Sudanese woman who killed rapist spouse ‘let down’ by lack of support

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Campaign by celebrities saw Noura Hussein’s death sentence quashed but, now free, promises of help have not materialised

Noura Hussein, the Sudanese woman whose conviction for killing her rapist husband four years ago caused an international outcry, said she is “disappointed” that promises of support have not materialised.

Speaking to the Guardian after her release from prison last year, Hussein, who was 19 when she was convicted, said she felt let down by the people and organisations that had campaigned for her release and who had offered her support.

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Banned by the Taliban: the Afghan girls fighting to go to school – video

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After the recent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, millions of teenage girls have been forbidden from receiving a high school education. Taliban officials have claimed the ban is temporary, but said the same thing the last time they were in power more than two decades ago. Back then, girls of all ages never returned to school. Today, much has changed in the country, and a new generation of girls and women possess radically different aspirations than they were previously allowed to hold. An anxious population waits to see to what extent the Taliban has changed, too

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‘We have never given up’: how Afghan women are demanding their education under the Taliban

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Since recapturing Afghanistan, the Taliban have largely if inconsistently closed down girls’ schooling – but have found a new generation ready to fight for the right to study

When the Taliban reached Parveen Tokhi’s home province of Zabul in mid-August and asked to use her school as a temporary barracks, the headteacher was frightened but clear about what she had to do.

She spent the bleak years of the first Taliban government in the 1990s stuck at home like almost all Afghan women, barred from education and work. She was determined that the same shadow wouldn’t engulf another generation.

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Living in a woman’s body: the Taliban fear our beauty, strength – and resistance

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Growing up in Afghanistan I was taught to hide my body. Now I see it as a symbol of rebellion against those who would try to control me

As a child, I never rode bicycles or played sports such as gymnastics and karate because it was “not good for girls”. I later understood it was to avoid the risk of breaking my hymen and “losing” my virginity, but I only understood the magnitude of this “loss” when my cousin and best friend got married. She had been abused by a mullah – a religious cleric – as a baby. Her mother was less worried about the trauma caused to her daughter by the abuse than she was about her daughter’s hymen having been broken as a result.

These fears were not misplaced. When my cousin did not bleed on her wedding night, she was sent back to her mother’s home the next morning beaten black and blue. Nobody questioned or blamed the husband.

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