Category Archives: Women’s rights and gender equality

Afghanistan face veil decree: ‘I’ve lost the right to choose my clothes’

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Women say they fear going out in public despite Taliban vow to respect hard-won rights after 2021 takeover

Despite everything that has happened to her country since the Taliban seized power last August, 29-year old Nafisa still never believed there would come a day when she would be unable to feel the sun on her face as she walked the streets of Kabul.

Yet on Saturday, the Taliban’s sinisterly named ministry for the propagation of virtue ordered that Nafisa, along with millions of women across Afghanistan, should ideally not leave the house at all. If they do, they must be fully veiled and never show their faces in public.

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Bid to overturn Sierra Leone loitering laws that activists claim ‘criminalise poverty’

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Citing claims of violence and rape by police, lawyers and activists mount legal challenge to laws brought in under British rule

A case has been filed against the government of Sierra Leone to overturn the country’s loitering laws, which activists and lawyers claim are discriminatory, and used by police to extract bribes from people and sexually abuse women.

The laws are used to target poor and vulnerable people, say critics, and to subject them to criminal sanctions for potential conduct rather than actual harm caused.

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Joy as Indonesia passes bill outlawing sexual abuse and forced marriage

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The wide-ranging legislation, which comes amid a rise in such cases, is heralded as a victory ‘for all women’

Indonesia has passed a landmark bill that for the first time outlaws forced marriage and sexual harassment.

To tears and cheers from supporters in the gallery, on Tuesday the House of Representatives passed the long-awaited legislation that criminalises nine forms of sexual violence, including physical and verbal assault, harassment, forced sterilisation and exploitation.

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Women face chronic violence in Syria’s ‘widow camps’, report warns

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Conditions drastically worse than in general camps, with some women forced to engage in ‘survival sex’, says World Vision

Women and children living in some of the hardest-to-reach camps in north-west Syria face chronic and high levels of violence and depression, with some women forced to engage in “survival sex”, a new report has revealed.

Children in so-called “widow camps” have been found to be severely neglected, abused and forced to work while mothers are at “breaking point” psychologically. More than 80% of women say they do not have adequate healthcare and 95% expressed feelings of hopelessness.

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Chile: students force closure of Santiago schools over sexual harassment and violence

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Unesco report finds that Covid school closures have made girls more vulnerable to gender-based violence

Student strikes have forced a string of school closures across Chile’s capital amid growing anger over sexist and violent behaviour only weeks after the country returned to in-person classes after two years of Covid-19 lockdowns.

“The demand is to stop the harassment,” said Javiera, 17, who was one of hundreds of girls to join protests outside the prestigious Santiago Lastarria school, after male students were found swapping intimate photos of their female classmates on Instagram. “We are demanding justice for victims, and for schools to stop protecting abusers.”

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‘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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