Violence Against Women - What we in the US take for granted

[AtLast]

The thread is to promote global awareness of violense against women and to view sexism outside of our own little backyard.

http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/1104granju.html


Feminism's Fourth Wave
Women are doing nearly everything men do, but...
November 4, 2003
by Katie Allison Granju


Last year, during the U.S. assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan, my seven-year old daughter, Jane seemed truly puzzled by the photos of Afghani women that dominated the news. Why, she wanted to know, did those women want to wear clothing that covered them from head to toe? Weren't they hot? How could they run or even smile at other people? Why weren't there ever interviews on television with any Afghani women? What was meant when it was said that now, women and girls in that country could read and write again?

I explained to Jane about the cultural and religious restrictions faced by these particular mothers and daughters, and she listened, mouth hanging open in vivid disbelief. She peppered me with questions about every aspect of the lives of Afghanistan's female population, and seemed utterly astounded when I told her that there are actually many places and cultures around the world in which girls cannot go to school; choose what they will wear or whom they will marry; own property; or vote.

As sad as it made me to explain the state of so many of the world's women to the most important girl in my life, I realized that the fact that Jane found this information so incomprehensible represented something very positive. The environment in which my daughter is growing into adulthood is one in which she sees few, if any restrictions on what is possible for her. Her American girlhood is very different from the one in which I came of age only a few decades ago.

When I was Jane's age, my working, feminist mother was an anomaly among the women I knew, and my parents had to make a conscious effort to be sure I understood that, although most doctors, police officers, and engineers were men, this didn't mean that "only" men could hold these jobs. My parents had to be ever-vigilant to protect both their daughters from being held back by unfair and sexist limitations, and they worked to be sure that we were exposed to art, music, and great ideas by women. They ensured that we had "Free to Be You and Me" books and records around the house, and a lifetime subscription to Ms. Magazine in our mailbox.

Today, however, the world has changed enough that parents don't have to make these kinds of special efforts to promote a sense of equality and possibility in our young daughters. Basic feminist consciousness has become an organic part of our culture, and we are all the better for it.

My third grade girl gets her news and information from terrific female journalists, and she is personally acquainted with women lawyers, priests, doctors, firefighters, farmers, athletes, social workers, and artists. Jane is an aggressive and successful competitor in her own chosen sport, and she enjoys listening to music by everyone from 'tween queen Hilary Duff to riot-grrls Sleater-Kinney.

Unlike my own parents, I do not feel compelled to pontificate on the wrong-headedness of rigid gender roles every time I see Jane playing with her dolls. I'm confident that she understands clearly that motherhood is not incompatible with professional achievement or civic engagement.

Also different from my own childhood as the daughter of '70s "women's libbers," Jane and her friends don't seem to feel any conflict between their femininity and their power. When I was a little girl, equality often meant trying to act or look like the little boys. Jane, however, is growing up in a pop culture infused with grrl-power -- from the Powerpuff Girls to Jessica Lynch. I observe her and her little friends playing superheroes, but their superheroes proudly wear sparkly pink capes as they save the world.

While all of this progress is terrific, I also recognize that my daughter is growing up in a society where women still earn less money than men for performing the same work; where women continue to live in realistic, ever-present fear of sexual assault; and where girls are still too often discouraged from studying math or science. There is still work ahead for her generation of rising young feministas. But as I watch her playing things like "President Barbie solves the Mideast peace crisis" with her friends, I feel hopeful.


Katie Allison Granju lives in Knoxville and is the mother of three children. She is the author of Attachment Parenting (Simon and Schuster, 1999) and her website is www.locoparentis.blogspot.com. This article first appeared in Metro Pulse Online.

[Nat]

I find it interesting that when I typed "violence" into google's search engine, "violence against women" was the first choice in the auto-fill list.

[AtLast]

WHOOPS! That's violence below!! Thanks, Nat!The thread is to promote global awareness of violense against women and to view sexism outside of our own little backyard.

http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/1104granju.html


Feminism's Fourth Wave
Women are doing nearly everything men do, but...
November 4, 2003
by Katie Allison Granju


Last year, during the U.S. assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan, my seven-year old daughter, Jane seemed truly puzzled by the photos of Afghani women that dominated the news. Why, she wanted to know, did those women want to wear clothing that covered them from head to toe? Weren't they hot? How could they run or even smile at other people? Why weren't there ever interviews on television with any Afghani women? What was meant when it was said that now, women and girls in that country could read and write again?

I explained to Jane about the cultural and religious restrictions faced by these particular mothers and daughters, and she listened, mouth hanging open in vivid disbelief. She peppered me with questions about every aspect of the lives of Afghanistan's female population, and seemed utterly astounded when I told her that there are actually many places and cultures around the world in which girls cannot go to school; choose what they will wear or whom they will marry; own property; or vote.

As sad as it made me to explain the state of so many of the world's women to the most important girl in my life, I realized that the fact that Jane found this information so incomprehensible represented something very positive. The environment in which my daughter is growing into adulthood is one in which she sees few, if any restrictions on what is possible for her. Her American girlhood is very different from the one in which I came of age only a few decades ago.

When I was Jane's age, my working, feminist mother was an anomaly among the women I knew, and my parents had to make a conscious effort to be sure I understood that, although most doctors, police officers, and engineers were men, this didn't mean that "only" men could hold these jobs. My parents had to be ever-vigilant to protect both their daughters from being held back by unfair and sexist limitations, and they worked to be sure that we were exposed to art, music, and great ideas by women. They ensured that we had "Free to Be You and Me" books and records around the house, and a lifetime subscription to Ms. Magazine in our mailbox.

Today, however, the world has changed enough that parents don't have to make these kinds of special efforts to promote a sense of equality and possibility in our young daughters. Basic feminist consciousness has become an organic part of our culture, and we are all the better for it.

My third grade girl gets her news and information from terrific female journalists, and she is personally acquainted with women lawyers, priests, doctors, firefighters, farmers, athletes, social workers, and artists. Jane is an aggressive and successful competitor in her own chosen sport, and she enjoys listening to music by everyone from 'tween queen Hilary Duff to riot-grrls Sleater-Kinney.

Unlike my own parents, I do not feel compelled to pontificate on the wrong-headedness of rigid gender roles every time I see Jane playing with her dolls. I'm confident that she understands clearly that motherhood is not incompatible with professional achievement or civic engagement.

Also different from my own childhood as the daughter of '70s "women's libbers," Jane and her friends don't seem to feel any conflict between their femininity and their power. When I was a little girl, equality often meant trying to act or look like the little boys. Jane, however, is growing up in a pop culture infused with grrl-power -- from the Powerpuff Girls to Jessica Lynch. I observe her and her little friends playing superheroes, but their superheroes proudly wear sparkly pink capes as they save the world.

While all of this progress is terrific, I also recognize that my daughter is growing up in a society where women still earn less money than men for performing the same work; where women continue to live in realistic, ever-present fear of sexual assault; and where girls are still too often discouraged from studying math or science. There is still work ahead for her generation of rising young feministas. But as I watch her playing things like "President Barbie solves the Mideast peace crisis" with her friends, I feel hopeful.


Katie Allison Granju lives in Knoxville and is the mother of three children. She is the author of Attachment Parenting (Simon and Schuster, 1999) and her website is www.locoparentis.blogspot.com. This article first appeared in Metro Pulse Online.

[AtLast]

Given what has been going on in places like Afghanistan and Eygpt concerning violence against women and extrememy brave women in these countries speaking out (attempting to become government officials, stonning, etc), I thought I'd bump this thread.

[Words]

Given the contents of the following article (amongst others), I'd say that your title is somewhat misleading AtLast. You might take a lot of things for granted, but what applies to you, doesn't necessarily apply to others, especially those from less privileged groups...and I'm not talking about those in Afghanistan, Egypt, or Syria, I'm talking about those in your own back yard.

http://www.now.org/issues/violence/stats.html

Best,

Words

[AtLast]

Given the contents of the following article (amongst others), I'd say that your title is somewhat misleading AtLast. You might take a lot of things for granted, but what applies to you, doesn't necessarily apply to others, especially those from less privileged groups...and I'm not talking about those in Afghanistan, Egypt, or Syria, I'm talking about those in your own back yard.

http://www.now.org/issues/violence/stats.html

Best,

Words

I see what you are saying. I don't recall exactly what was going on when I first did this thread. Yes, my own back yard is a mess.

What I often have problems with here in the US is a US-centric outlook about violence against women- not much awareness of how globally, women are treated. That we need to look at all of the issues and cultural variables around the world that women face. That is what I was trying to get at. Believe me, I get what continues here in the US.

[Novelafemme]

I see what you are saying. I don't recall exactly what was going on when I first did this thread. Yes, my own back yard is a mess.

What I often have problems with here in the US is a US-centric outlook about violence against women- not much awareness of how globally, women are treated. That we need to look at all of the issues and cultural variables around the world that women face. That is what I was trying to get at. Believe me, I get what continues here in the US.

I recently took a class on transnational feminisms, which is precicely what AtLast is referencing in her above post. and, yes, the us has a very us-centric perspective on just about every human rights issue you can think of. take "third-world" countries for example. "third-world" as compared to what? the u.s.? does this mean we are a "first world" country? and if so, what criteria did we meet in order to exact a first place status?

[AtLast]

I recently took a class on transnational feminisms, which is precicely what AtLast is referencing in her above post. and, yes, the us has a very us-centric perspective on just about every human rights issue you can think of. take "third-world" countries for example. "third-world" as compared to what? the u.s.? does this mean we are a "first world" country? and if so, what criteria did we meet in order to exact a first place status?

This does click with what I was trying to say.

Something that has struck me as well is how I can better see the world outside of US paradigms is seeing independent films. Sure, I just like this genre, but, more often than not, I leave feeling like I might just understand perspectives outside of my own better. Yes, I see mainstream US movies, but, let's face it, they are mostly (not always) from a white, middle class perspective of life in the US.

[*Anya*]

Nearly One in Five U.S. Women Raped in Lifetime
By David Beasley

ATLANTA (Reuters) Dec 15 - Nearly 20% of women in the United States have been raped at least once and one in four has been severely attacked by an intimate partner, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday.

Almost 80% of female victims were first raped before age 25 and more than half were raped by a current or former partner, according to the CDC's analysis of data from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey of 18,049 men and women in the United States in 2010.

The survey, which the CDC said was the first of its kind, found that one in eight female rape victims said the perpetrator was a family member.

Alaska, Oregon, and Nevada had the highest percentage of women who had been raped, the study found.

One in seven men reported having experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner and one in 71 men said they had been raped at least once.

The report highlights numerous long-term health problems associated with sexual violence, including headaches, chronic pain, and difficulty sleeping.

"This landmark report paints a clear picture of the devastating impact these violent acts have on the lives of millions of Americans," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement.

The CDC numbers show rape "is still a crime that impacts almost every family in America," said Scott Berkowitz, president of the nonprofit group Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

More victims need to report rape and more rapists need to go to prison, Berkowitz told Reuters.

"The more we can get off the street, the more crime we can prevent," he said.

The new report defines rape as "completed forced penetration, attempted penetration, and alcohol or drug-facilitated completed penetration."

SOURCE: http://1.usa.gov/t10uOI

CDC, 2011.

Reuters Health Information © 2011

==========================================

[Glenn]

Fully one quarter of all South African men admit to having raped at least one woman or girl in their lifetime, according to a recent study about rape and HIV in South Africa. This study used Palm Pilots to guarantee anonymity.

[Greyson]

I just saw a quick news story the other night about "Honor Killings." Yes, they are happening globally. One story in particular was out of Canada. These women are killed by male family members because they have done something that is considered to have "disgraced" the family. Something horrible like stepped out of their home without being chapperoned by a male family member.

[Kobi]

TEL AVIV—For years, Israeli women have been pressured into moving to the rear of public buses serving strictly religious Jews. Now, in confrontations reminiscent of the era of Rosa Parks, women are pushing back.

Doron Matalon, an 18-year-old soldier, says she was standing at the front of the No. 49a municipal bus after an overnight shift at her Jerusalem base on Wednesday morning last week when an ultra-Orthodox man ordered her to move back.

"I said that I have the right to sit here," she says. "Then a commotion ensued, and other people gathered around and started shouting….It was scary."

The conflict drew national media attention and highlighted the growing tensions in Israel as the population of once-insular ultra-Orthodox Jews has surged beyond the urban enclaves of Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, where they have lived for decades.

As the Orthodox seek jobs and housing in other areas, they are increasingly interacting with mainstream Israelis who see their strict code of religious practice to be coercive, and a threat to Israel's democracy.

"It's a slippery slope. What starts with women boarding the bus in the back because of modesty can end up with women not voting," says Mickey Gitzin, the director of Be Free Israel, a nonprofit that promotes religious pluralism. "It could turn Israeli society into a segregated society in which women don't have a place in public life."

In the past week, public outrage peaked following a TV report on the harassment of an 8-year-old girl by ultra-Orthodox men, in the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Shemesh. The men spat on the girl and called her a prostitute for dressing in a way they considered to be immodest.

That spurred thousands of people to demonstrate against the segregation of women on Tuesday, Dec. 27; a counterprotest two days later ignited clashes in Jerusalem and in Beit Shemesh.

Haredi rabbis of Beit Shemesh said the women of their community observe modesty rules voluntarily because they are for women's honor and Judaism orders the separation of men and women in the public sphere.

Many ultra-Orthodox object to segregation, but have gone on the defensive. "The problem is that they want to make a secular state in the Holy Land. That's what creates the friction," said Israel Eichler, a parliament member from the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party.

Mr. Eichler alleged that Israel's secular media is focusing on the ultra-Orthodox treatment of women as a way of indirectly attacking a political ally of the Haredis—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly denounced segregation. Last week he insisted that "women will sit in every place."

Haredi political parties wield outsized clout because they often function as kingmakers of Israeli coalitions by moving between right and left, though their outlook is more in keeping with right-wing coalitions.

For decades, Israel's Haredi sects kept at a distance from the mainstream, congregating in self-contained ghettos. Their religious ideology rejected the foundations of the secular Jewish state even as they participated in its politics.

Because they made up a relatively small percentage of the population, they were allowed to avoid army service and oversee schools that shed elements of state curriculum, and lobbied for public subsidies that enabled graduates to continue religious study rather than pursue jobs.

In the 14 years since the first public buses went into operation in Jerusalem, exclusion and segregation efforts have expanded to include men-only sidewalks in ultra-Orthodox
neighborhoods, separated waiting rooms at some health clinics, and the gradual disappearance of women from billboard advertisements in Jerusalem.

With Haredi birthrates double the average Israeli family, ultra-Orthodox Jews are poised to surge from around 10% of the country's population. Economists say the status quo, where most Haredi men don't work, will eventually drag down the economy because the government won't be able to afford the rising cost of so many men staying out of the workplace.

The bus lines that initially served only ultra-Orthodox communities eventually spilled over into mixed areas. As the number of segregated bus lines grew into the dozens and complaints emerged, the liberal Israel Religious Action Center, an affiliate of the U.S. Reform Jewish movement, petitioned the Supreme Court to ban segregation on buses.

In a ruling in January 2011, the court said that while forced segregated buses were illegal in principle, it would be possible to allow them to operate for one year on a voluntary basis.

The ruling highlighted a dilemma for Israel's government in determining how to handle diverse religious and national groups that reject many of its basic principles.

"The deeper question is how does a democracy deal with separatist fundamentalist communities in its midst," said Yossi Klein Halevi, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. "Israel's great domestic challenge is to figure out the balance between allowing cultural autonomy and reinforcing its sovereign authority."

With the one-year trial period about to end, the petitioners say they plan to press the Supreme Court again.

For Ms. Matalon, it might be too late. She says she fears riding the bus and hasn't returned for fear of harassment.

"It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last time," she says.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204368104577136253309226604.html?m od=WSJ_myyahoo_module

[Novelafemme]

I just saw a quick news story the other night about "Honor Killings." Yes, they are happening globally. One story in particular was out of Canada. These women are killed by male family members because they have done something that is considered to have "disgraced" the family. Something horrible like stepped out of their home without being chapperoned by a male family member.

CANADA?!?! :|

[Cin]

Eve Ensler Calls for a Billion Women to Strike Against Sexual Violence

The Vagina Monologues shot writer Eve Ensler to stardom. Now she is a global campaigner who plans to call a billion women out on strike against rape.

Eve Ensler has big plans. For the 15th anniversary of V-Day in 2013, she wants to get a billion women – the figure comes from the UN's estimate that one in three women will be raped or assaulted during their lifetime – to come together, "to walk out of their jobs, to walk out of any situation where they have been violated, or just to walk because they were violated, and to join with whoever. If women could see the numbers, how many women we are who have been through this experience …
http://www.alternet.org/story/153625/eve_ensler_calls_for_a_billion_women_to_strike_aga inst_sexual_violence/?page=entire

[EnderD_503]

Given the contents of the following article (amongst others), I'd say that your title is somewhat misleading AtLast. You might take a lot of things for granted, but what applies to you, doesn't necessarily apply to others, especially those from less privileged groups...and I'm not talking about those in Afghanistan, Egypt, or Syria, I'm talking about those in your own back yard.

http://www.now.org/issues/violence/stats.html

Best,

Words

Also took a bit of an issue with this thread for the same reason. I really dislike it when people from North America or Europe talk about "what we take for granted" as far as human rights. Are women's rights violated with such frequency and to such excessive degrees in developed nations vs. many developing nations? No, evidently women's rights have come along way in Canada, the US, France, Germany, the UK etc. However, just because they have come a long way does not mean we should say that we are taking anything for granted when we discuss violence against women in developed nations. It's the same argument I think I've heard frequently even on this forum about queer/trans rights worldwide...that despite the homophobia and transphobia that still exist in the west and other developed regions, that because somebody has it worse we are "taking things for granted."

To me that comes off as though we're "whining" when we try to fight for equal rights in developed nations. But the truth is someone will always have it worse, and that does not mean that we are taking anything for granted in the developed/western world as far as our own rights. It does not mean that women's rights in one nation are more important than women's rights in another nation. Both are equally important.

Just a month or two ago I was appalled to hear that some U.S. states had passed or reinstated laws that allowed police to conduct criminal investigations against women who had miscarriages, in order to make absolutely certain that the woman had not somehow induced the miscarriage herself. So not only are the police and the government policing women's bodies by not allowing them access to abortion resources, but they are actively pursuing miscarriage cases. This is violence against women. No, it's not acid thrown in a woman's face, but it is still violence against women. It is still policing women's bodies. It is still completely atrocious and it is happening in a western "developed" nation.

I just feel that the wording of this thread is problematic and that people need to understand that no matter how far rights for marginalized people (including women!) have come in the west, they still have very far to go.

As far as US centrism...well yes, I think a lot of the issues discussed on the forum are extremely US-centric...however, that should not detract from the struggles of women in the US. I'm not accusing you of that or anything else, AtLast, but I'm just saying that wording can be "dangerous" as far as what it may convey to some.

[EnderD_503]

CANADA?!?! :|

Erm...you do realise honour killings occur all over the world yes? Basically anywhere that has residents who come from regions where honour killing is accepted will have an issue with honour killings. Canada (and other western nations including the US) has had quite a few cases where immigrants from the middle east or south Asia, particularly, participate in honour killings. There was one case recently where a husband, his wife and their son were responsible for drowning their three daughters over "revealing" social media pictures and having boyfriends or something like that. Every nation in the world has a struggle against honour killings.

[Truly Scrumptious]

CANADA?!?! :|

Yes, Canada.
Right now there is a trial going on that has a mother, father and son accused of killing 4 family members: 3 daughters and one first wife.

It's hard to stomach, but if you're up for the challenge you can read about it here:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1097462--dimanno-kingston-canal-trial-hears-expert-testimony-on-honour-killing

[Novelafemme]

Honestly...I consider myself fairly well-read and I don't recall coming across honor killings in Canada. off to do some research:::

...even though it makes me incredibly sad and frustrated.

[Novelafemme]

“A woman’s body is considered to be the repository of family honour.

“Honour crimes are acts of violence committed by male family members against female family members who are held to have brought dishonour onto the family.’’

How? By exhibiting themselves in unacceptable ways, by going where they don’t belong, by asserting a whiff of independence, by getting raped, by asking for a divorce — all moral crimes that require expunging, sometimes to the extreme of death.

“Cleansing one’s honour of shame is typically handled by the shedding of blood. It’s really about men’s need to control women’s sexuality and freedom.’’

So very troubling. The article's closing summed my feelings up perfectly.

I work with a large group of Saudi scholars and have (over time) developed honest and respectful relationships with each one of them. There are days when I "push the envelope" a bit with some of the men by asking some very direct questions. I have to run and get some study time in for an exam tomorrow, but I'll be back to discuss this issue more tomorrow. It is near and dear to my heart.

[Cin]

Why We Must Put Our Bodies on the Line to Fight Against the Right-Wing War on Women's Rights

Is it time for a reproductive rights revolution? We've done it before; the climate may be right again for occupations and actions to save our bodies from state control.

Despite some modest gains, overall there’s a steady chipping away of abortion rights and access to contraception, no matter who’s in office or what he or she pledges to do.

In the cities and towns of America, the effects of that chipping are showing. Austerity budget cuts, the absolutely brutal legislative war on women and the further stigmatization of abortion mean that clinics are shutting their doors, costs and travel times for procedures are rising and the back-alley abortion (now more commonly done with a pill obtained over the Internet than with a coat hanger) is very much back with us. But of course since the passage of the now "accepted compromise" of Hyde Amendment banning funding for low-income women to have abortions, the truth is it never really left.

Here’s the reality that many feminists know: As the income gap in America has grown, another gap has grown along with it. Women are divided into two classes. With each small law that has been passed requiring parental consent, mandatory ultrasounds and waiting periods, with each guarantee that we will never reconsider allowing Medicaid-funded abortions, the divide between the women who will always be able to have abortions and those who are now living in a pre-Roe era keeps growing--and the number of women in the latter category expands along with it.

It may not be the 99 percent vs. the 1 percent just yet, but the class, race and privilege gap over who has reproductive rights is turning into a chasm, with a smaller and smaller number of women on the side that allows them freedom over their bodies...

...As for the issue of reproductive rights, which has been stuck in its own rut with a squeamish population and an even more squeamish power structure approving every abortion restriction on the book, it’s beguiling to wonder what we could do with that power to change the conversation.

If we had the bodies on the ground, might we stake out some ideological territory that would enable those mainstream organizations to push harder? Could we spread a new message that would make our fellow citizens--who as a rule are so indifferent about the reproductive freedoms of women who aren’t themselves or their families--think twice?

Our opponents have been beating us at this game. We hold rallies and marches while they do cruel but effective things like blocking clinic entrances and stalking and harassing women (and resorting to unspeakable violence, it should never be forgotten). This ranges from reprehensible to criminal to psychotic, but it indicates a level of moral surety and confidence that should be ours, that is ours.
http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153545/why_we_must_put_our_bodies_on_the_line_to_fight_ag ainst_the_right-wing_war_on_women%27s_rights?page=entire

[Kobi]

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: January 9, 2012

CAIRO — At first Samira Ibrahim was afraid to tell her father that Egyptian soldiers had detained her in Tahrir Square in Cairo, stripped off her clothes, and watched as she was forcibly subjected to a “virginity test.”

But when her father, a religious conservative, saw electric prod marks on her body, they revived memories of his own detention and torture under President Hosni Mubarak’s government. “History is repeating itself,” he told her, and together they vowed to file a court case against the military rulers, to claim “my rights,” as Ms. Ibrahim later recalled.

That case has proved successful so far. For the first time last month, an administrative court challenged the authority of the military council and banned such “tests.” Ms. Ibrahim will ask a military court on Sunday to hold the officers accountable.

But nearly a year after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, Ms. Ibrahim’s story in many ways illustrates the paradoxical position of women in the new Egypt. Emboldened by the revolution to claim a new voice in public life, many are finding that they are still dependent on the protection of men, and that their greatest power is not as direct actors but as symbols of the military government’s repression. It is not a place where Egyptian feminists had hoped women would be, back in the heady days of the revolution, when they played an active role, side by side with men, to bring down a dictator.

“Changing the patriarchal culture is not so easy,” said Mozn Hassan, 32, executive director of the seven-year-old group Nazra for Feminist Studies.

Female demonstrators have suffered sexual assaults at the hands of Egyptian soldiers protected by military courts. Human rights groups say they have documented the cases of at least 100 women who were sexually assaulted by soldiers or the security police during the time of military rule — including Ms. Ibrahim’s experience in March and the anonymous woman recorded on video last month as she was beaten and stripped, exposing a blue bra, by soldiers clearing Tahrir Square after fresh protests. The vast majority of cases have come during the three-month crackdown on demonstrations that has taken more than 80 lives since the beginning of October.

Even when women have pushed back, as they did late last month in a historic march by thousands through downtown Cairo — many carrying pictures of the “blue bra girl” — they have done so only with the protection of men. Men encircled the marchers and at times those male guardians seemed to direct the crowd or lead its chants; many chants led by women called for more “gallantry” from Egyptian men.

Famous mainly as silent victims, women like the “blue bra girl” risk becoming mascots of the male-dominated uprising, said Ms. Hassan, one of several Egyptian feminists who said they were thrilled by the size of the march — but winced at its dependence on men.

“If you are calling for men to protect you, that is bad, because then they define you and they stick to the traditional roles,” Ms. Hassan said. (Even among feminist groups, there were few all-women organizations in Egypt, and of the 13 founders of Ms. Hassan’s organization, 6 were men.)

At the same time, the revolution has opened the door for the ascendance of conservative Islamist parties, including religious extremists who want to roll back some of the rights women do have. The mainstream Muslim Brotherhood is poised to win nearly half of the seats in Parliament, when voting is completed this week, while the more extreme Salafis are on track to win more than 20 percent.

While Brotherhood leaders talk of encouraging traditional roles but respecting women’s career choices, many Salafis oppose allowing women to play leadership roles and favor regulating issues like women’s dress to impose Islamic standards of modesty. “We have major concerns because what they are proposing is very oppressive,” said Ghada Shabandar, a veteran human rights activist.

Even now, however, women have almost no leadership roles in the various activists groups that formed out of the original protests that ousted Mr. Mubarak and so far women have fewer than 10 of the roughly 500 seats in Parliament. The electoral debates have featured scant mention of women’s issues — from the pervasiveness of genital cutting to legally sanctioned employment discrimination, despite official statistics showing that a third of Egyptian households depend on female earners.

“We have no feminist movement now,” said Hala Mustafa, editor of Democracy, a state-run journal.

Feminists say that for decades Egyptian security forces have kidnapped or sexually abused women as a way to pressure the men in their families. In a celebrated case from 2005, a journalist, Nawal Ali, sought to press charges against the government-aligned thugs who had beaten and stripped her in an attack. It is not all bleak, though. Some argue that the revolution is helping to revitalize the dormant women’s movement, if only by opening up politics so Ms. Ibrahim could have her day in court or thousands could march for the woman stripped to her bra.

“That is the difference the Egyptian revolution has made,” Ms. Shabandar said. “The wall of fear is gone, and now when we march for the ‘blue bra girl,’ we march for Nawal Ali.”

A few younger feminists, though, say that philosophy keeps women in the back seat. “That is the same thing women were told after the revolution,” said Masa Amir, 24, recalling when the military council picked an all-male panel of jurists to draft a temporary constitution. But the result was a document implying that the president could only be a man — perhaps because no one at the table raised the issue.

But the stigma attached to victims of sexual abuse continues to force many to remain silent.

Six other women were subjected to “virginity tests” by the soldiers that night in March when Ms. Ibrahim was assaulted. The humiliation was so great, Ms. Ibrahim said, that she initially hoped to die. “I kept telling myself, ‘People get heart attacks, why don’t I get a heart attack and just die like them?’ ”

Her mother’s advice was to keep silent, if she ever hoped to marry, or even lead a dignified life in their village in rural Upper Egypt, Ms. Ibrahim said in an interview.

When she did speak out, Egyptian new media shunned her, she said, and only the international news media would cover her story. She received telephone calls at all hours threatening rape or death. But with the support of her father — an Islamist activist who was detained and tortured two decades ago — she persevered, and next week will go back to military court in an attempt to hold the perpetrators accountable as well.

When she saw the video of the “blue bra girl” being beaten, it redoubled her resolve. “I felt I had to avenge her,” she said.



http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/world/middleeast/egyptian-women-confront-restrictions-of-patriarchy.html?_r=1

[Kobi]

JERUSALEM — In the three months since the Israeli Health Ministry awarded a prize to a pediatrics professor for her book on hereditary diseases common to Jews, her experience at the awards ceremony has become a rallying cry.

The professor, Channa Maayan, knew that the acting health minister, who is ultra-Orthodox, and other religious people would be in attendance. So she wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt. But that was hardly enough.

Not only did Dr. Maayan and her husband have to sit separately, as men and women were segregated at the event, but she was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage.

Though shocked that this was happening at a government ceremony, Dr. Maayan bit her tongue. But others have not, and her story is entering the pantheon of secular anger building as a battle rages in Israel for control of the public space between the strictly religious and everyone else.

At a time when there is no progress on the Palestinian dispute, Israelis are turning inward and discovering that an issue they had neglected — the place of the ultra-Orthodox Jews — has erupted into a crisis.

And it is centered on women.

“Just as secular nationalism and socialism posed challenges to the religious establishment a century ago, today the issue is feminism,” said Moshe Halbertal, a professor of Jewish philosophy at Hebrew University. “This is an immense ideological and moral challenge that touches at the core of life, and just as it is affecting the Islamic world, it is the main issue that the rabbis are losing sleep over.”

The list of controversies grows weekly: Organizers of a conference last week on women’s health and Jewish law barred women from speaking from the podium, leading at least eight speakers to cancel; ultra-Orthodox men spit on an 8-year-old girl whom they deemed immodestly dressed; the chief rabbi of the air force resigned his post because the army declined to excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers from attending events where female singers perform; protesters depicted the Jerusalem police commander as Hitler on posters because he instructed public bus lines with mixed-sex seating to drive through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods; vandals blacked out women’s faces on Jerusalem billboards.

Public discourse in Israel is suddenly dominated by a new, high-toned Hebrew phrase, “hadarat nashim,” or the exclusion of women. The term is everywhere in recent weeks, rather like the way the phrase “male chauvinism” emerged decades ago in the United States.

All of this seems anomalous to most people in a country where five young women just graduated from the air force’s prestigious pilots course and a woman presides over the Supreme Court.

But each side in this dispute is waging a vigorous public campaign.

The New Israel Fund, which advocates for equality and democracy, organized singalongs and concerts featuring women in Jerusalem and put up posters of women’s faces under the slogan, “Women should be seen and heard.” The Israel Medical Association asserted last week that its members should boycott events that exclude women from speaking on stages.

Religious authorities said liberal groups were waging a war of hatred against a pious sector that wanted only to be left in peace.

That sector, the black-clad ultra-Orthodox, is known in Israel as Haredim, meaning those who tremble before God. It comprises many groups with distinct approaches to liturgy as well as to coat length, hat style, beard and side locks and different hair coverings for women. Among them are the Hasidim of European origin as well as those from Middle Eastern countries who are represented by the political party Shas.

As a group, the ultra-Orthodox are, at best, ambivalent about the Israeli state, which they consider insufficiently religious and premature in its founding because the Messiah has not yet arrived. Over the decades the Haredim angrily demonstrated against state practices like allowing buses to run on the Sabbath, and most believed the state would not survive.

The feeling was mutual. The original Haredi communities in Europe were decimated in the Holocaust, and when Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, offered subsidies and army exemptions to the few in Israel then, he thought he was providing the group with a dignified funeral.

“Most Israelis at the time assumed the Haredim would die off in one generation,” said Jonathan Rosenblum, a Haredi writer.

Instead, they have multiplied, joined government coalitions and won subsidies and exemptions for children, housing and Torah study. They now number a million, a mostly poor community in an otherwise fairly well-off country of 7.8 million.

They have generally stayed out of the normal Israeli politics of war and peace, often staying neutral on the Palestinian question and focusing their deal-making on the material and spiritual needs of their constituents. Politically they have edged rightward in recent years.

In other words, while rejecting the state, the ultra-Orthodox have survived by making deals with it. And while dismissing the group, successive governments — whether run by the left or the right — have survived by trading subsidies for its votes. Now each has to live with the other, and the resulting friction is hard to contain.

“The coexistence between the two is breaking down,” said Arye Carmon, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem research organization. “It is an extreme danger.”

Mr. Carmon compared the strictly religious Jews of Israel to the Islamists in the Arab world, saying that there was a similar dynamic at play in Egypt, with tensions growing between the secular forces that led the revolution and the Islamic parties now rising to prominence.

“Today there is not a city without a Haredi community,” said Rabbi Abraham Israel Gellis, a 10th-generation Jerusalem Haredi rabbi, as he sat in his home, an enormous yeshiva on a hill outside his window. “I have 38 grandchildren and they live all over the country.”

But while the community has gained increased economic might — there is a growing market catering to its needs — what is lacking is economic productivity. The community places Torah study above all other values and has worked assiduously to make it possible for its men to do that rather than work. While the women often work, there is a 60 percent unemployment rate among the men, who also generally do not serve in the army.

It is this combination — accepting government subsidies, refusing military service and declining to work, all while having six to eight children per family — that is unsettling for many Israelis, especially when citizens feel economically insecure and mistreated by the government.

“The Haredi issue is a force flowing underground, like lava, and it could explode,” Shelly Yacimovich, a member of the Israeli Parliament, and leader of the Labor Party, said in an interview. “That’s why it must be dealt with wisely, helping them to join modern society through work.”

While change has begun — thousands of Haredi men are learning professions, more are getting jobs and a small number have joined the Israeli Army — the community is in crisis. Many ultra-Orthodox leaders feel threatened by the integration into the broader society by some of their followers, and they are desperately holding on to their power.

“We have to earn a living,” said Rabbi Shmuel Pappenheim, a reformist Haredi leader from the town of Beit Shemesh. “We are a million people with a million problems. The rabbis can shout a thousand times against it but it won’t help them. And so we have the extremism — on both sides.”

Dan Ben-David, executive director of the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, said fertility rates in the Haredi community made the issue especially acute; the very religious Jews are the only group in Israel having more children today than 30 years ago.

“They make up more than 20 percent of all kids in primary schools,” he said. “In 20 years, there is a risk we will have a third-world population here which can’t sustain a first-world economy and army.”

And, Mr. Ben-David added, what children learn in the ultra-Orthodox school system — largely unregulated by the state as a result of political deals — is unsuited for the 21st century, so even those who wish to work are finding it hard to find jobs.

“Their schools do not give them the skills to work in a modern economy and no training in civil or human rights or democracy,” Mr. Ben-David said. “They don’t even know what we are talking about — what we want from them — when we talk about discrimination against women.”

The Haredi community thinks this is a wild misunderstanding of its views.

Rabbi Dror Moshe Cassouto, a 33-year-old Hasid, lives with his wife and four sons in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim, one of the centers of Haredi life in Israel. He never looks directly at a woman, other than his wife, and he believes that men and women have roles in nature that in modern society have been reversed, “because we live in darkness.”

His goal is to spread the light. “God watches over the Jewish nation as long as it studies Torah,” he said.

Still, the spitting and Nazi talk horrify him. He says hard-liners have caused harm to the Haredim.

Asked about the recent troubles, Rabbi Cassouto shook his head and said, “A fool throws a stone into a well and 1,000 sages can’t remove it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/world/middleeast/israel-faces-crisis-over-role-of-ultra-orthodox-in-society.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

[LaneyDoll]

Nearly One in Five U.S. Women Raped in Lifetime
By David Beasley

ATLANTA (Reuters) Dec 15 - More victims need to report rape and more rapists need to go to prison, Berkowitz told Reuters.

"The more we can get off the street, the more crime we can prevent," he said.


SOURCE: http://1.usa.gov/t10uOI

CDC, 2011.

Reuters Health Information © 2011

==========================================

I think the problem with his statement is that a vast majority of victims are unable to report the crime. Little girls rarely "tell" out of fear. And, speaking as someone who HAS been slipped Rohypnol, it is very unsettling to wake up one day and realize that you have lost an entire weekend.

I am not speaking for others here, I am speaking for myself. A victim does not always have a voice.

:sparklyheart:

[Kobi]

Associated Press
January 21, 2012
BLANTYRE, Malawi -- It's been 18 years since the late dictator Hastings Kamuzu Banda's "indecency in dress" laws were repealed in Malawi, but mobs of men and boys in the largely conservative southern African country have recently been publicly stripping women of their miniskirts and pants.

Friday, hundreds of outraged girls and women, among them prominent politicians, protested the attacks while wearing pants or miniskirts and T-shirts emblazoned with such slogans as: "Real men don't harass women." A recording of Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" got a loud cheer when it was played during the protest. Men also took part.

"Some of us have spent our entire life fighting for the freedom of women," Vice President Joyce Banda told the protesters. "It's shocking some men want to take us back to bondage."

During Banda's 1963-1994 dictatorship, women in Malawi were banned from wearing pants and short skirts. Banda lost power in the country's first multiparty election in 1994 and died three years later.

"Life President" Banda led the nation to independence from Britain, only to impose an oppressive rule. Whims that reflected a puritanical streak were law. The U.S.-trained physician and former Presbyterian church elder, himself always attired in a dark suit and Homburg hat, also banned long hair on men.

"We fought for a repeal of these laws," Ngeyi Kanyongolo, a law professor, said at Friday's protests. "Women dressed in trousers or miniskirts is a display of the freedom of expression."

While Banda is gone, strains of conservatism remain in the impoverished, largely rural nation. Some of the street vendors who have attacked women in recent days claimed it was un-Malawian to dress in miniskirts and pants. Some said it was a sign of loose morals or prostitution.

The attacks took on such importance, President Bingu wa Mutharika went on state television and radio on the eve of the protest to assure women they were free to wear what they want.

Other African nations, including South Africa, have seen similar attacks and harassment of women. Last year, women and men held "SlutWalks" in South Africa, joining an international campaign against the notion that a woman's appearance can excuse attacks. "SlutWalks" originated in Toronto, Canada, where they were sparked by a police officer's remark that women could avoid being raped by not dressing like "sluts."

In Malawi Friday, protesters also wore T-shirts with the slogan: "Vendor: Today, I bought from you, tomorrow, you undress me?" Street children and vendors have been accused of carrying out the attacks.

The president ordered police to arrest anyone who attacks women wearing pants or miniskirts. Police had already made 15 arrests.

"Women who want to wear trousers should do so as you will be protected from thugs, vendors and terrorists," the president said in a local language, Chichewa. "I will not allow anyone to wake up and go on the streets and start undressing women and girls wearing trousers because that is criminal."

Vice President Banda has speculated the attacks were the result of economic woes in a country that is currently racked by shortages of fuel and foreign currency.

"There is so much suffering that people have decided to vent their frustrations on each other," she told reporters.

A vendors' representative at Friday's protest, Innocent Mussa, was booed off the stage. Mussa insisted those who were harassing women were not true vendors.

"I'm ashamed to be associated with the stripping naked of innocent women," he said. "Those were acts of thugs because a true vendor would want to sell his wares to women, he can't be harassing potential customers."

Mussa blamed the harassment on unemployed young people.


http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120121/NEWS11/120129964/-1/NEWS

[*Anya*]

Maze of Injustice

A Summary of Amnesty International's Findings

Sexual violence against Indigenous women in the USA is widespread. According to US government statistics, Native American and Alaska Native women are more than 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than other women in the USA. Some Indigenous women interviewed by Amnesty International said they didn't know anyone in their community who had not experienced sexual violence. Though rape is always an act of violence, there is evidence that Indigenous women are more likely than other women to suffer additional violence at the hands of their attackers. According to the US Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of the reported cases of rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women, survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men.
Sexual violence against Indigenous women is the result of a number of factors and continues a history of widespread human rights abuses against Indigenous peoples in the USA. Historically, Indigenous women were raped by settlers and soldiers, including during the Trail of Tears and the Long Walk. Such attacks were not random or individual; they were tools of conquest and colonization. The attitudes towards Indigenous peoples that underpin such human rights abuses continue to be present in in the USA today. They contribute to the present high rates of sexual violence perpetrated against Indigenous women and help to shield their attackers from justice. They also reflect a broader societal norm that devalues women and girls and creates power dynamics that enable sexual violence against women of all backgrounds.

A Complex Relationship between the U.S. and Tribal Governments

Treaties, the US Constitution and federal law affirm a unique political and legal relationship between federally recognized tribal nations and the federal government. There are more than 550 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes in the USA. Federally recognized Indian tribes are sovereign under US law, with jurisdiction over their citizens and land. They maintain government-to-government relationships with each other and with the US federal government. The federal government has a unique legal relationship to the tribal nations that includes a trust responsibility to assist tribal governments in safeguarding the lives of Indian women. This federal trust responsibility is set out in treaties between tribal nations and the federal government, further solidified in federal law, federal court decisions and policy.

Issues of Jurisdiction

The federal government has created a complex interrelation between federal, state and tribal jurisdictions that undermines tribal authority and often allows perpetrators to evade justice. Tribal governments are hampered by a complex set of laws and regulations created by the federal government that make it difficult, if not impossible, to respond to sexual assault in an effective manner.
Women who come forward to report sexual violence are caught in a jurisdictional maze that federal, state and tribal police often cannot quickly sort out. Three justice systems -- tribal, state and federal -- are potentially involved in responding to sexual violence against Indigenous women. Three main factors determine which of these justice systems has authority to prosecute such crimes:
whether the victim is a member of a federally recognized tribe or not;
whether the accused is a member of a federally recognized tribe or not; and
whether the offence took place on tribal land or not.
The answers to these questions are often not self-evident and there can be significant delays while police, lawyers and courts establish who has jurisdiction over a particular crime. The result can be such confusion and uncertainty that no one intervenes, and survivors of sexual violence are denied access to justice.

Barriers to Justice

Tribal law enforcement agencies are also chronically under-funded – federal and state governments provide significantly fewer resources for law enforcement on tribal land than are provided for comparable non-Native communities. The lack of appropriate training in all police forces -- federal, state and tribal -- also undermines survivors' right to justice. Many officers don't have the skills to ensure a full and accurate crime report. Survivors of sexual violence are not guaranteed access to adequate and timely sexual assault forensic examinations, which is caused in part by the federal government's severe under-funding of the Indian Health Service.
Tribal prosecutors cannot prosecute crimes committed by non-Native perpetrators. Tribal courts are also prohibited from passing custodial sentences that are in keeping with the seriousness of the crimes of rape or other forms of sexual violence. As a direct result of passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act, the maximum prison sentence tribal courts can now impose for any crimes, including rape, is three years, up from the previous maximum of one year. In comparison, the average prison sentence for rape handed down by state or federal courts is between eight years and eight months and 12 years and 10 months respectively.
As a consequence, Indigenous women are denied justice. And the perpetrators are going unpunished.
In failing to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence, the US is violating these women's human rights. Indigenous women's organizations and tribal authorities have brought forward concrete proposals to help stop sexual violence against Indigenous women. While passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act is a concrete step in the right direction, much more remains to be done.
Amnesty International is calling on the US government to take the necessary steps to end sexual violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women:
Ensure the full implementation, funding and resources for the Tribal Law and Order Act

Work in collaboration with American Indian and Alaska Native women to obtain a clear and accurate understanding about the prevalence and nature of sexual violence against Indigenous women;
Ensure that American Indian and Alaska Native women have access to adequate and timely sexual assault forensic examinations without charge to the survivor.
Provide resources to Indian tribes for additional criminal justice and victim services to respond to crimes of sexual violence against Native American and Alaska Native women.

[*Anya*]

Violence Against Women Information

Around the world at least one woman in every three has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Every year, violence in the home and the community devastates the lives of millions of women. Gender-based violence kills and disables as many women between the ages of 15 and 44 as cancer, and its toll on women's health surpasses tha of traffic accidents and malaria combined.1 Violence against women is rooted in a global culture of discrimination which denies women equal rights with men and which legitimizes the appropriation of women's bodies for individual gratification or political ends.
Background

Violence against women feeds off discrimination and serves to reinforce it. When women are abused in custody, when they are raped by armed forces as "spoils of war", or when they are terrorized by violence in the home, unequal power relations between men and women are both manifested and enforced.

Violence against women is compounded by discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, sexual identity, social status, class, and age. Such multiple forms of discrimination further restrict women's choices, increase their vulnerability to violence and make it even harder for women to obtain justice.

There is an unbroken spectrum of violence that women face at the hands of people who exert control over them. States have the obligation to prevent, protect against, and punish violence against women whether perpetrated by private or public actors. States have a responsibility to uphold standards of due diligence and take steps to fulfill their responsibility to protect individuals from human rights abuses.

International Women's Human Rights Foundations

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status." (Article 2)

The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women states that "violence against women means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life." (Article 1) It further asserts that states have an obligation to " exercise due diligence to prevent, investigate and, in accordance with national legislation, punish acts of violence against women, whether those acts are perpetrated by the State or by private persons." (Article 4-c)

The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), defines discrimination against women as any "distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on the basis of equality between men and women, of human rights or fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field." (Article 1)

Violence Against Women : A Human Rights Violation

Violence against women is rampant in all corners of the world. Such violence is a human rights violation that manifests itself in a number of ways, including:

Violence against women in custody
The imbalance of power between inmates and guards is a result of prisoners' total dependency on correctional officers and guards' ability to withhold privileges and is manifest in direct physical force and indirect abuses. Because incarcerated women are largely invisible to the public eye, little is done when the punishment of imprisonment is compounded with that of rape, sexual assault, groping during body searches, and shackling during childbirth. Women are often coerced into providing sex for "favors" such as extra food or personal hygiene products, or to avoid punishment. There is little medical or psychological care available to inmates. Though crimes in prison such as rape are prevalent, few perpetrators of violence against female inmates are ever held accountable. In 1997, for example, only ten prison employees in the entire federal system were disciplined for sexual misconduct.

Acid Burning and Dowry Deaths
Women's subjugation to men is pervasive in the political, civil, social, cultural, and economic spheres of many countries. In such societies, a woman who turns down a suitor or does not get along with her in-laws far too frequently becomes a victim of a violent form of revenge: acid burning. Acid is thrown in her face or on her body and can blind her in addition to often fatal third-degree burns. Governments do little to prevent the sale of acid to the public or to punish those who use it to kill and maim. Similarly, the ongoing reality of dowry-related violence is an example of what can happen when women are treated as property. Brides unable to pay the high "price" to marry are punished by violence and often death at the hands of their in-laws or their own husbands.

"Honor Killings"
In some societies, women are often looked upon as representatives of the honor of the family. When women are suspected of extra-marital sexual relations, even if in the case of rape, they can be subjected to the cruelest forms of indignity and violence, often by their own fathers or brothers. Women who are raped and are unable to provide explicit evidence, are sometimes accused of zina, or the crime of unlawful sexual relations, the punishment for which is often death by public stoning. Such laws serve as a great obstacle inhibiting women from pursuing cases against those who raped them. Assuming an accused woman's guilt, male family members believe that they have no other means of undoing a perceived infringement of "honor" other than to kill the woman.

Domestic violence
Violence against women is a global pandemic. Without exception, a woman's greatest risk of violence is from someone she knows. Domestic violence is a violation of a woman's right to physical integrity, to liberty, and all too often, to her right to life itself. When states fail to take the basic steps needed to protect women from domestic violence or allow these crimes to be committed with impunity, states are failing in their obligation to protect women from torture.

Female Genital Mutilation
Female genital mutilation is the removal of part or all of the external female genitalia. In its most severe form, a woman or girl has all of her genitalia removed and then stitched together, leaving a small opening for intercourse and menstruation. It is practiced in 28 African countries on the pretext of cultural tradition or hygiene. An estimated 135 million girls have undergone FGM with dire consequences ranging from infection (including HIV) to sterility, in addition to the devastating psychological effects. Though all the governments of the countries in which FGM is practiced have legislation making it illegal, the complete lack of enforcement and prosecution of the perpetrators means FGM continues to thrive.

Human Rights Violations Based on Actual or Perceived Sexual Identity

Sexuality is regulated in a gender specific way and maintained through strict constraints imposed by cultural norms and sometimes through particular legal measures supporting those norms. The community, which can include religious institutions, the media, family and cultural networks, regulates women's sexuality and punishes women who do not comply. Such women include lesbians, women who appear "too masculine," women who try to freely exercise their rights, and women who challenge male dominance. Lesbian women, or women who are perceived to be lesbian, experience abuses by state authorities in prisons, by the police, as well as private actors such as their family and community. Numerous cases document young lesbians being beaten, raped, forcibly impregnated or married, and otherwise attacked by family members to punish them or "correct" their sexual identity. Lesbians in the United States face well-founded fears of persecution by police because of their sexual identity and violence against lesbians occurs with impunity on a regular basis.

Gender Based Asylum
The UN High Commission on Refugees advocates that "women fearing persecution or severe discrimination on the basis of their gender should be considered a member of a social group for the purposes of determining refugee status." (Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women) Such persecution may include harms unique to their gender such as, but not limited to, female genital mutilation, forcible abortion, domestic violence that the state refuses to act on and honor killings. However, women seeking asylum in the United States rarely gain refugee status based on claims of gender-related violence, as U.S. asylum adjudicators apply a restrictive interpretation of the international definition of a refugee entitled to persecution. In particular, lesbian women seeking asylum from sexuality-based persecution in their countries of origin often, and legitimately, fear disclosing their sexuality to authorities.

The Problem of Impunity
Perpetrators of violence against women are rarely held accountable for their acts. Women who are victims of gender-related violence often have little recourse because many state agencies are themselves guilty of gender bias and discriminatory practices. Many women opt not to report cases of violence to authorities because they fear being ostracized and shamed by communities that are too often quick to blame victims of violence for the abuses they have suffered. When women do challenge their abusers, it can often only be accomplished by long and humiliating court battles with little sympathy from authorities or the media. Violence against women is so deeply embedded in society that it often fails to garner public censure and outrage.
Violence against women is a violation of human rights that cannot be justified by any political, religious, or cultural claim. A global culture of discrimination against women allows violence to occur daily and with impunity. Amnesty International calls on you to help us eradicate violence against women and help women to achieve lives of equality and human

Read More: Violence Against Women Fact Sheet

[pamela]

there are so many terrible things happening in less developed countries and yet so much could be done to help these women out that is not being done.

[Kobi]

KINGSTON, Ontario (AP) — A jury on Sunday found three members of an Afghan family guilty of killing three teenage sisters and another woman in what the judge described as "cold-blooded, shameful murders" resulting from a "twisted concept of honor," ending a case that shocked and riveted Canadians.

Prosecutors said the defendants allegedly killed the three teenage sisters because they dishonored the family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress, dating, socializing and using the Internet.

The jury took 15 hours to find Mohammad Shafia, 58; his wife Tooba Yahya, 42; and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

After the verdict was read, the three defendants again declared their innocence in the killings of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, Shafia's childless first wife in a polygamous marriage.

Their bodies were found June 30, 2009, in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario, where the family had stopped for the night on their way home to Montreal from Niagara Falls, Ontario.

The prosecution alleged it was a case of premeditated murder, staged to look like an accident after it was carried out. Prosecutors said the defendants drowned their victims elsewhere on the site, placed their bodies in the car and pushed it into the canal.

Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger said the evidence clearly supported the conviction.

"It is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more honorless crime," Maranger said. "The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honor ... that has absolutely no place in any civilized society."

In a statement following the verdict, Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson called honor killings a practice that is "barbaric and unacceptable in Canada."

Defense lawyers said the deaths were accidental. They said the Nissan car accidentally plunged into the canal after the eldest daughter, Zainab, took it for a joy ride with her sisters and her father's first wife. Hamed said he watched the accident, although he didn't call police from the scene.

After the jury returned the verdicts, Mohammad Shafia, speaking through a translator, said, "We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn't commit the murder and this is unjust."

His weeping wife, Tooba, also declared the verdict unjust, saying, "I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother."

Their son, Hamed, speaking in English said, "I did not drown my sisters anywhere."

Hamed's lawyer, Patrick McCann, said he was disappointed with the verdict, but said his client will appeal and he believes the other two defendants will as well.

But prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis welcomed the verdict.

"This jury found that four strong, vivacious and freedom-loving women were murdered by their own family in the most troubling of circumstances," Laarhuis said outside court.

"This verdict sends a very clear message about our Canadian values and the core principles in a free and democratic society that all Canadians enjoy and even visitors to Canada enjoy," he said to cheers of approval from onlookers.

The family had left Afghanistan in 1992 and lived in Pakistan, Australia and Dubai before settling in Canada in 2007. Shafia, a wealthy businessman, married Yahya because his first wife could not have children.

Shafia's first wife was living with him and his second wife. The polygamous relationship, if revealed, could have resulted in their deportation.

The prosecution painted a picture of a household controlled by a domineering Shafia, with Hamed keeping his sisters in line and doling out discipline when his father was away on frequent business trips to Dubai.

The months leading up to the deaths were not happy ones in the Shafia household, according to evidence presented at trial. Zainab, the oldest daughter, was forbidden to attend school for a year because she had a young Pakistani-Canadian boyfriend, and she fled to a shelter, terrified of her father, the court was told.

The prosecution said her parents found condoms in Sahar's room as well as photos of her wearing short skirts and hugging her Christian boyfriend, a relationship she had kept secret. Geeti was becoming almost impossible to control: skipping school, failing classes, being sent home for wearing revealing clothes and stealing, while declaring to authority figures that she wanted to be placed in foster care, according to the prosecution.

Shafia's first wife wrote in a diary that her husband beat her and "made life a torture," while his second wife called her a servant.

The prosecution presented wire taps and mobile phone records from the Shafia family in court to support their honor killing allegation. The wiretaps, which capture Shafia spewing vitriol about his dead daughters, calling them treacherous and whores and invoking the devil to defecate on their graves, were a focal point of the trial.

"There can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this," Shafia said on one recording. "Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows ... nothing is more dear to me than my honor."

Defense lawyers argued that at no point in the intercepts do the accused say they drowned the victims.

Shafia's lawyer, Peter Kemp, said after the verdicts that he believes the comments his client made on the wiretaps may have weighed more heavily on the jury's minds than the physical evidence in the case.

"He wasn't convicted for what he did," Kemp said. "He was convicted for what he said".

http://news.yahoo.com/jury-finds-afghan-family-guilty-honor-killings-202441543.html

[Kobi]

By AMIR SHAH
The Associated Press
January 30, 201


KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan police say a woman has been strangled to death, apparently for bearing a baby girl instead of a boy, and her husband is the main suspect.

The police chief for Khanabad district in Kunduz province says the man fled the area last week about the time his 22-year-old wife was found dead in her house. Medical examiners said the woman was strangled.

Police Chief Sufi Habibullah says they have the man's mother in custody because she appears to have collaborated in a plot to kill her daughter-in-law.

Provincial women's affairs chief Nadira Ghya said the victim had warned family members that her husband had threatened to kill her if she gave birth to another daughter.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120130/NEWS11/120139987/-1/NEWS

[Kobi]

This is going on in my backyard. Sexism, white male privilege, immigrant discrimination/racism, domestic violence, and a child stuck in the middle.

This article infuriated me. I wish it was an example of the exception of the way things are done. In my experence, it is too often the rule. And, it sucks when the process to protect a child gets circumvented over and over and over.

I dont know what the truth is. I dont know who is responsible for what. But, I know that child should be coming first and he isnt.

This is just the beginning of the article. Reading the entire thing might infuriate you. It is also somewhat detailed and might be disturbing to some.


By Patrick Cassidy
pcassidy@capecodonline.com
January 29, 2012


BARNSTABLE — She thought she finally had the sordid proof in hand; her young son's pajamas stained with what she suspected was his father's semen.

But after years of fighting a language barrier, her own fears and a Barnstable probate judge who did not believe that her ex-husband had molested the boy, she froze.

If she called police, she feared Barnstable Probate Judge Robert Scandurra would take the boy away from her as he had threatened if she made further allegations of sexual abuse against her ex-husband that could not be proven. If she stayed silent, she firmly believed her then 6-year-old son's safety was at risk.

"I was frustrated," she said in a recent interview, adding that she no longer believed that police, state child welfare officials or even advocates for child sexual abuse victims could help.

Haunted by her son's cries for help and her inability to protect him, the Cape Cod mother pressed on anyway. In June 2010, she gave the pajamas to a Sandwich police detective.

Last November, the results of a comparative analysis revealed DNA from the semen stain matched DNA collected from the boy's father, according to court documents.

On Jan. 19, Scandurra scheduled an April probate court hearing to determine custody of the boy in light of the DNA evidence and a report from investigators who interviewed the boy after the semen was matched to his father. No criminal charges have been filed against the father based on the latest evidence.

The woman is hopeful the new evidence will be enough to convince authorities — and Scandurra — that she has been telling the truth all along, and that finally her son will be protected. But she is cautious, having harbored similar hopes before, only to be disappointed.

A Cape Cod Times review of legal, medical and child welfare documents that span more than five years and interviews with more than a dozen people, reveal that despite serious concerns about possible sexual abuse expressed by the boy's doctor, his therapist, a teacher, a school counselor, child welfare officials and a court-appointed investigator, Scandurra continued to allow both supervised and unsupervised visits between the boy and his father.

Scandurra's decisions left the mother no option but to fight the court system — often without a lawyer — in a race to save her son.



http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120129/NEWS/201290335&cid=sitesearch

[Kobi]

Women in Saudi Arabia refuse to hit the brakes in their fight to overturn the kingdom's female driving ban.

One woman is even suing the government for not allowing her a driver's license, she told CNN on Sunday.

Manal al-Sharif, who is leading a campaign pushing for women's driving rights, said she filed her suit in November after officials rejected her license application and ignored her ensuing complaints.

"It's just creating positive pressure on the officials to get back to us," she told CNN. "And it will encourage more women to apply for licenses and file lawsuits."

While there is no law in Saudi Arabia prohibiting women from driving, religious edicts are often interpreted to mean that females should not be behind the wheel, and officials comply with the religious authorities. Under the same decrees, Saudi women are also banned from opening bank accounts, obtaining passports or attending school without a male chaperone, CNN reported.

Al-Sharif's fight began after she was arrested for posting a video of herself driving on YouTube. She was detained for nearly two weeks, according to The Associated Press.

There is a long history of women being punished for driving in Saudi Arabia, although it wasn't formerly banned by the Minister of Interior until 1990. Just last year, a Saudi court found Shaima Jastaina guilty of violating the ban, and sentenced her to ten lashes. She was pardoned from the beating, but her case ignited protests and launched campaigns like the one al-Sharif leads, Women2Drive.

Last June, the organization posted a banner on its Facebook page that said, "We are all Manal Sharif," according to CNN. The post also included a quote from King Abdullah: "The day will come when women will be able to drive."

Al-Sharif, a single mother and information technology specialist, told CNN after her detention that she was determined to speak up about what she thinks is gravely unjust.

"We have a saying," she said. "The rain starts with a single drop. This is a symbolic thing."



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/saudi-women-fight-drive-religious-leaders-continue-enforce-female-driving-ban-article-1.1017957#ixzz1lgy6tkoW

[Kobi]

KABUL (Reuters) - Crouching behind a wooden barrier, 27-year-old Sergeant Sara Delawar fires her M-4 rifle at a target showing the silhouette of a man, part of a training exercise for Afghan special forces.

Anxious to defuse tensions stoked by foreign male soldiers raiding Afghans' homes at night in what is a conservative Muslim country, Afghanistan has begun training elite female troops to join Afghan male soldiers on operations.

"Before we joined this unit, our operations were done by foreign troops and they did not know our culture. People were critical so we joined to help out," Delawar, a former policewoman in Jowzjan province, said.

"I have already fought the Taliban. My comrades were martyred in fights with the Taliban and we have killed them too, but during the night raids I haven't fought insurgents yet."

Fluent in four local languages, Delawar is one of only 12 female soldiers who has been trained to fight and conduct searches in what is an attempt to pay greater respect to cultural sensitivities.

Surprise night raids in pursuit of militants have long stoked anti-Western sentiment in Afghanistan, with many locals seeing them as assaults on their privacy and on women's privacy in particular.

In conservative southern areas of the country where the Taliban is strong, such raids have created even more ill will.

On Sunday after months of tense negotiations, Afghanistan and the United States agreed that only Afghan forces would search residential homes or compounds.

As well as seeking to assuage cultural sensitivities, the new strategy is aimed at lowering civilian casualties and shoring up President Hamid Karzai's popularity at a time when foreign combat troops are handing over to Afghan forces.

"It's unacceptable for us to see male soldiers body-searching females. Men are not allowed to touch females," third-lieutenant Binazir, 24, said.

"I'm proud to say that I'm here to serve my country side by side with my brothers. I'm proud that Afghan girls are here and I hope more girls join in order to provide better services for brothers and sisters in the battlefield and save lives."

NO EASY TASK

At a training facility on the outskirts of Kabul, the Afghan capital, suspected militants inside a mock-up house are advised to leave the building via loudspeaker. A hijab-wearing woman cries and asks where the soldiers are taking her brother.

Female soldiers lead her by the arm away from the scene.

"The training they've already received in this unit has had a good outcome during night raids," Captain Mohammad Khalid, head of training at the special forces, said.

"In order to launch our operations in a good manner we have to have 100 female officers in our forces."

The program began two months ago and drew women from the Tajik, Uzbek, Turkmen and Hazara ethnic groups, but not from the Pashtun where the Taliban recruit most of their fighters.

The task of finding women has become even more important ahead of a pullout of most NATO combat troops by the end of 2014.

Afghanistan is still recovering from the strict social conservatism of the Taliban, whose hardline laws during their 1996-2001 rule marginalized women, stripping them of the right to work, study or move freely.

The country remains one of the world's worst places for women and setting up female special forces was not an easy task.

Recruitment is especially tricky. Women are put off by the prospect of social rejection and disapproval from their families.

Traditionally confined to their homes, women also face problems their male comrades do not.

"My children were attending school in Jowzjan, but here they don't because I'm not at home and they can't go by themselves," said Delawar, a mother-of-two and a widow.

"I hope there is support for them to get educated especially when I'm out of my house on the duty."

http://news.yahoo.com/afghan-elite-raiders-u-equals-155447759.html

[Kobi]

WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - Shortly after sending U.S. troops to Afghanistan in October 2001, President George W. Bush focused so intently on freeing Afghan women from the shackles of Taliban rule that empowering them became central to the United States' mission there.

More than a decade later, as his successor Barack Obama charts a way out of the unpopular war, Afghan girls are back in school, infant and maternal survival rates are up and a quarter of the parliament's seats are reserved for women who at least on paper have the same voting, mobility and other rights as men.

But Obama rarely speaks about that progress, delegating discussion of women's rights to his secretary of state and other top diplomats so he can focus on narrower goals for Afghanistan: uprooting the militants there and getting out.

Obama's lack of overt attention to Afghan women has led many to fear their hard-fought gains will slip away as the United States hands off security responsibility to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, with ever-present Taliban leaders still holding sway in much of the countryside.

Women's issues are not on the formal agenda at the NATO summit the United States will be hosting in Chicago later this month. Afghanistan is poised to send an all-male delegation.

Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said it was "really worrying" that Obama only made a passing reference to women on his trip to Afghanistan last week, when he affirmed a general need "to protect the human rights of all Afghans - men and women, boys and girls."

Obama's choice of words also was noticed in Afghanistan, which remains a conservative and male-dominated Islamic country. Gulalai Safi, a female member of parliament from northern Balkh province, said it was "somewhat of a shame" that he did not use the visit to underline women's rights.

Amnesty is calling on Obama to spell out a plan to preserve the gains for women since the fall of the Taliban, which from 1996 to 2001 barred Afghan girls from schools and kept women from working and from leaving their homes unless they were accompanied by a male relative or spouse and were covered in a head-to-toe burqa.

For more than a year, the White House has been pursuing, with little success, reconciliation talks involving the Islamist group that could give it a share of power in Kabul.

"When you are negotiating with the Taliban, ensuring the rights of women is not a simple matter," Nossel said. "In that sense you can understand why they are not talking about it but that is why it is doubly worrying."

WOMEN AS BAROMETER

Bush did not mention Afghan women when he launched the war a month after the September 11, 2001, attacks that were orchestrated by al Qaeda militants based in Afghanistan.

But he soon broadened his rhetoric, saying that empowering women was essential to strengthen Afghan society and prevent al Qaeda from keeping a foothold there.

His wife, Laura Bush, also made Afghan women one of her signature issues. In November 2001 she delivered the weekly presidential radio address "to kick off a worldwide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al Qaeda terrorist network and the regime it supports in Afghanistan, the Taliban."

The former schoolteacher visited Afghanistan three times to support educational projects and efforts to tackle infant and child mortality rates, then the highest in the world next to Sierra Leone, and to inform women about their legal rights.

"Her effort really helped to sell to the American people why we needed to do what we were doing," said Anita McBride, former chief of staff to Laura Bush.

Today's White House has a more limited definition of that purpose, one that eschews his predecessor's "nation-building."

In February, White House spokesman Jay Carney stated that U.S. troops were in Afghanistan to root out al Qaeda militants and their training camps, accusing the previous administration of adopting a mission was "muddled and unclear."

The Obama administration says women's rights remain an important goal, even if not the focus of its public rhetoric.

"That refocusing of our efforts is reflected in our public messaging. When we talk about the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, you will hear us speak to that core goal," said Caitlin Hayden, a National Security Council spokeswoman. But she said there was "absolutely no lessening of our attention or support to Afghan women from this administration."

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, an Afghanistan expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, said the American public was so tired of the war that today's White House was reluctant to dwell on what is at stake with the U.S. departure.

"Now the question is how to get out, not to explain why we got in," Lemmon said. But she stressed the risks of seeing women "as a pet project instead of a barometer for the society's health."

"How the war ends really does matter. The question is, will a Somalia be left behind in Afghanistan? And if it is, women will be the first to suffer," she said.

DISCOURAGING HEADLINES

Obama often jokes that he is surrounded by women, sharing the White House with his wife, two daughters and mother-in-law and working closely with female advisers and cabinet members including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

He created the first White House Council on Women and Girls shortly after taking office to make sure the U.S. government "considers the needs of women and girls in every decision we make." In December he signed an executive order and action plan telling U.S. diplomats to work to empower women as "equal partners" in conflict prevention and peace-making.

But neither he nor first lady Michelle Obama has used their tremendous attention-generating power to stress the needs of women outside the United States, including in Afghanistan.

That work has mainly been left to Clinton, herself a former first lady, who has visited Afghanistan three times as the United States' top diplomat. Melanne Verveer, U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women's issues, has been to Afghanistan twice.

In an interview, Verveer acknowledged the American public had lost track of the advances for Afghan women amid "discouraging" headlines about acid attacks on girls in school and violence against women that the United Nations has said remains at "near-pandemic levels."

"But it is important to see just so much has been achieved, that there should not be a reversal in the investments and the progress that has been made, because that would be to the detriment of Afghanistan's future," she said.

Asked why Obama has not spoken more directly about the need to protect Afghan women, Verveer said the president had made clear he wants U.S. diplomats and military personnel to focus on women's issues on the ground as they prepare for the transition.

‘NO SUPPORT'

In the talks with the Taliban, which are currently suspended, the White House has said it would only accept a reconciliation deal that requires respect for the Afghan constitution, which codifies equal rights for men and women.

But in Afghanistan, many women fear that Karzai could trade away their freedoms as he seeks to curry support in conservative parts of the country, including in rural areas where female illiteracy remains above 90 percent and child marriages are still widespread despite being illegal.

In March, Karzai backed recommendations from powerful clerics to segregate the sexes in the workplace and allow husbands to beat their wives under certain circumstances. Last year he sacked the deputy governor of southern Helmand province after two women performed without headscarves at a high-profile concert.

"This is a green light paving the way for extreme figures, including the Taliban, to come forward," said Fawzia Koofi, a female member of parliament who has said she plans to run in the country's 2014 presidential elections.

Senior Afghan peace negotiators have said the Taliban is now willing to soften its hardline ideology to regain a share of power. But a spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, said this week that "it is too early to discuss" whether the group now supported girls' education.

Another Afghan lawmaker, Shukria Barakzai, said the shift in attention from the White House had decreased the pressure on Afghan leaders to take the status of women seriously.

"We are now getting the sense that in order to achieve women's rights, we have to act alone ... We feel like we have no support," said Barakzai, who met Laura Bush during one of her trips to Afghanistan.

On a trip to Washington, Afghanistan's health minister Suraya Dalil said women in the country were ready to stay politically active to prevent backsliding in health and other areas with the political changeover.

"Being a woman in Afghanistan today is different from being a woman in Afghanistan 11 years ago," the Kabul-trained surgeon and mother of three girls said in an interview. "We want to be engaged in the peace process, in the transition, and decisions about the future of Afghanistan. In all of this we want to be engaged and we want our voice to be heard."

There are also grassroots women's movements emerging in Afghanistan and signs of change in the capital's streets.

Kabul is now full of beauty parlors for women, unheard of during Taliban times, and girls in their white hijab and black uniforms are seen going merrily to and from school every day.

But there has been a dramatic spike in reports of violence against women, and very few perpetrators are getting punished for crimes including beatings, torture and brutal killings.

Over the past year, the volunteer group Young Women For Change glued more than 700 posters around Kabul showing a woman's veiled face that read: "don't grab my hair/don't throw stones in my face/I can stand on my own two feet/I can build this country with you together."

Almost all the posters were torn down within days.

http://news.yahoo.com/insight-afghan-women-fade-white-house-focus-exit-184126698.html

[Kobi]

NEW DELHI (AP) — Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged Thursday to take action to protect the nation’s women while the young victim of a gang rape on a New Delhi bus was flown to Singapore for treatment of severe internal injuries.

The Dec. 16 rape and brutal beating of the 23-year-old student triggered widespread protests in New Delhi and other parts of India demanding a government crackdown on the daily harassment Indian women face, ranging from groping to severe violence. Some protesters have called for the death penalty or castration for rapists, who under current laws face a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.

Rape victims rarely press charges because of social stigma and fear they will be accused of inviting the attack. Many women say they structure their lives around protecting themselves and their daughters from attack.

Singh’s government set up two committees in response to the protests. One, looking into speeding up sexual assault trials, has already received 6,100 email suggestions. The second will examine what lapses might have contributed to the rape — which took place on a moving bus that passed through police checkpoints — and suggest measures to improve women’s safety.

‘‘Let me state categorically that the issue of safety and security of women is of the highest concern to our government,’’ Singh told a development meeting. He urged officials in India’s states to pay special attention to the problem.

‘‘There can be no meaningful development without the active participation of half the population, and this participation simply cannot take place if their security and safety is not assured,’’ he said.

The victim of the gang rape arrived in Singapore on an air ambulance Thursday and was admitted in ‘‘extremely critical condition,’’ to the intensive care unit’’ of the Mount Elizabeth hospital, renowned for multi-organ transplant facilities, the hospital said in a statement.

India’s Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said in a statement that the government, which is overseeing her treatment and paying the costs, had decided to send her abroad on the recommendation of her doctors here.

‘‘Despite the best efforts of our doctors, the victim continues to be critical and her fluctuating health remains a big cause of concern to all of us,’’ he said.

Her family was also being sent to Singapore to be with her during her treatment, which could last weeks, he said.

Meanwhile, police in riot gear manning barricades filled the streets of central Delhi in a show of force ahead of another planned protest march. Near daily protests have shut down the center of the capital for days since the rape. Police quelled some of the demonstrations with tear gas, water cannons and baton charges.

One police officer died Tuesday after collapsing during a weekend protest. Police said an autopsy showed the officer had a heart attack that could have been caused by injuries suffered during violence at the protest. An Associated Press journalist at the scene said the officer was running toward the protesters with a group of police when he collapsed on the ground and began frothing at the mouth and shaking. Two protesters rushed to the officer to try to help him. Police charged eight people with murder in the death of the policeman.

Police said the rape victim was traveling on the evening of Dec. 16 with a male friend on a bus when they were attacked by six men who gang raped her and beat the couple with iron rods before stripping them and dumping them on a road. All six suspects in the case have been arrested, police said.

B.D. Athani, the medical superintendent of Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi, where the woman had been treated, said she suffered severe intestinal and abdominal injuries, underwent three surgeries and had parts of her intestines removed, according to the Press Trust of India.

‘‘With fortitude and courage, the girl survived the aftereffects of the injuries so far well. But the condition continues to be critical,’’ he was quoted as saying.

___

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/2012/12/27/india-rape-victim-singapore-pledges-action/R8IpUj8YELv8XUVsgm1lmO/story.html

[Kobi]

SINGAPORE (AP) — A young Indian woman who was gang-raped and severely beaten on a bus died Saturday at a Singapore hospital, after her horrific ordeal galvanized Indians to demand greater protection for women from sexual violence that impacts thousands of them every day.

The woman and a male friend, who have not been identified, were traveling in a public bus in the Indian capital, New Delhi, after watching a film on the evening of Dec. 16 when they were attacked by six men who raped her. They also beat the couple and inserted an iron rod into her body resulting in severe organ damage. Both of them were then stripped and thrown off the bus, according to police.

Indian police have arrested six people in connection with the attack, which left the victim with severe internal injuries, a lung infection and brain damage. She also suffered from a heart attack while in hospital in India.

The frightening nature of the crime shocked Indians, who have come out in their thousands for almost daily demonstrations, demanding stronger protection for women and death penalty for rape, which is now punishable by a maximum life imprisonment. Women face daily harassment across India, ranging from catcalls on the streets, groping and touching in public transport to rape.

But the tragedy has forced India to confront the reality that sexually assaulted women are often blamed for the crime, which forces them to keep quiet and not report it to authorities for fear of exposing their families to ridicule. Also, police often refuse to accept complaints from those who are courageous enough to report the rapes and the rare prosecutions that reach courts drag on for years.

http://news.yahoo.com/indian-rape-victim-dies-hospital-215914078.html

[femmeInterrupted]

I'm glad that the evolution of this thread has gone from a local to global thrust; North American feminism (herstorically) has been 'us' and 'them' centric, and problematically so. Coming out of 12 years in the VAW, North American women don't have a hell of a lot to 'take for granted'. We are simply part of a vast, unfortunate sisterhood in a global community where violence against women and girls is pervasive, and is both epidemic and endemic in nature, and exists on a continuum.

Marginalized women, specifically First Nations/Indigenous/Aboriginal women are (not) surviving with rates of violence that leave them 3 times for likely to face violence than settler/non-indigenous women. Here in Canada, we have nearly 600 missing and murdered Aboriginal women. Both the United Nations and Amnesty have asked Canada to take 'more' action on the issue of violence facing Aboriginal women.
To date, I feel strongly that feminism in Canada has failed our First Nations sisters, and serious work towards a shift to "Decolonize Feminism" ( a term I have been giving much thought to recently) needs to happen. The Gender/Race/Class intersections need to be expanded into deeper understandings of Colonization and the sexism, racism,patriarchy and misogyny that are a part of that Colonial legacy.



Here are some links about the above mentioned woman from India.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/47662_10151367434641696_21077527_n.png

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/india-gang-rape-victims-father-1521289

[femmeInterrupted]

"$659 million over fiver years for VAWA programs while expanding VAWA to new protections for LGBT as well as American Indian victims of domestic violence according to Huffington Post."



http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/02/12/tribal-provisions-secure-passing-violence-against-women-act-senate-147630

[femmeInterrupted]

http://www.vice.com/read/irelands-new-abortion-laws-probably-wont-change-a-thing

[Soon]

http://www.vice.com/read/irelands-new-abortion-laws-probably-wont-change-a-thing

Fantastic article. Well worth the read.

Thank you for sharing it.

[femmeInterrupted]

"When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." - Audre Lorde

Today we honor Audre Lorde's birth :)

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/538246_352891438158695_552046094_n.jpg

[femmeInterrupted]

*trigger warning*

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/08/world/africa/south-africa-gang-rape/index.html

[femmeInterrupted]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/01/opinion/wolfe-end-rape-in-2013/index.html

[Kobi]

*trigger warning*

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/08/world/africa/south-africa-gang-rape/index.html


"Every four minutes a local radio station broadcasts a ping -- a reminder that a person is raped in South Africa, on average, every four minutes."

"Some 71% of women report having been victims of sexual abuse, the government notes."

Pretty disgusting statistics.

[femmeInterrupted]

"Every four minutes a local radio station broadcasts a ping -- a reminder that a person is raped in South Africa, on average, every four minutes."

"Some 71% of women report having been victims of sexual abuse, the government notes."

Pretty disgusting statistics.


Incredibly so.
I believe that statistically, those rates are similar in North America, with the discrepancies being under/non-reporting of sexualized abuses/traumas. There are many many reasons for this, but the end result is that the pervasiveness of sexualized crimes/traumas are not accurate. They reflect only reported instances.

We know women don't tell. We know women have lived for years with the silence of their abuses and trauma. We know women can block out childhood trauma's completely, so again, under reporting. And we know also, of course, that boys and men are also victimized this way, although the stats for men goes down sharply after adulthood.

If you broaden the definition from 'rape' which must include forcible penetration by it's definition, and include any forced, unwanted, sexualized violence, I think our heads would explode trying to wrap our minds around it.

It seems the one unifying cultural trait that all continents and countries share, is one of RAPE CULTURE.

A quarter of all the boys interviewed (in Soweto) said that 'jackrolling', a term for gang rape, was fun. (wikipedia sourced)

[Soon]

Incredibly so.
I believe that statistically, those rates are similar in North America, with the discrepancies being under/non-reporting of sexualized abuses/traumas.


(underlining mine)

I don't think the rates are similar.

I am sure that our North American statistics are skewed some with, as you stated, under/non-reporting, but I don't think it approaches the extreme rate of South Africa's level of sexual violence against women--some of the highest in the world.

One of every 17 Canadian women is raped at some point in her life (http://www.assaultcare.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=58) and one in four will be sexually assaulted (http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Statistics+sexual+assault+Canada/7966915/story.html), whereas in the CNN article it reads that the government of South Africa noted that 71% of women report having been victims of sexual abuse.

More incredibly painful statistics concerning South Africa's epidemic of sexual violence against women: Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_South_Africa#Rape)

South Africa no longer has the highest rapes per capita, but rape and sexual violence is still a problem.[15] The incidence of rape has led to the country being referred to as the "rape capital of the world".[16] One in three of the 4,000 women questioned by the Community of Information, Empowerment and Transparency said they had been raped in the past year.[17] More than 25 per cent of South African men questioned in a survey published by the Medical Research Council (MRC) in June 2009 admitted to rape; of those, nearly half said they had raped more than one person.[18][19] Three out of four of those who had admitted rape indicated that they had attacked for the first time during their teens.[18] South Africa has amongst the highest incidences of child and baby rape in the world.[20] [21]
---

[Kobi]

Incredibly so.
I believe that statistically, those rates are similar in North America, with the discrepancies being under/non-reporting of sexualized abuses/traumas. There are many many reasons for this, but the end result is that the pervasiveness of sexualized crimes/traumas are not accurate. They reflect only reported instances.

We know women don't tell. We know women have lived for years with the silence of their abuses and trauma. We know women can block out childhood trauma's completely, so again, under reporting. And we know also, of course, that boys and men are also victimized this way, although the stats for men goes down sharply after adulthood.

If you broaden the definition from 'rape' which must include forcible penetration by it's definition, and include any forced, unwanted, sexualized violence, I think our heads would explode trying to wrap our minds around it.

It seems the one unifying cultural trait that all continents and countries share, is one of RAPE CULTURE.

A quarter of all the boys interviewed (in Soweto) said that 'jackrolling', a term for gang rape, was fun. (wikipedia sourced)



The patriarchy is pervasive all over the world. So is misogyny and sexism. Sexual assault is one of the more despictable displays of male privilege and socialization.

I hope the statistics of South Africa are not comparable to those of North America. That would be incredibly disturbing.

As difficult as it is to read these stories and to learn of the atrocities women face all over the world, it is necessary for the stories to come to the forefront. It is reality. Women and men need to face it, confront it, and call it what it is - institutionalized and systemic patriarchal bullshit.

[Kobi]

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Maldives authorities have called on the country’s Islamic ministry and judiciary to stop the public flogging of a teenaged girl for having sex outside marriage, a government official said Friday.

A court in the tiny island of Feydhoo last week sentenced the 15-year-old to 100 lashes after she admitted to having consensual sex, a court official said on condition of anonymity because he had no formal approval to speak to the media.

The official said details of the consensual sex emerged when police investigated her complaint against her stepfather and another man of sexually abusing her.

He said the sentence includes an option for the flogging to be carried out when the girl turns 18.

Her partner has not been identified and it was not clear how hard the police tried to identify him, he said.

Government spokesman Masood Imad said the government considered her a victim of sexual abuse and wants the sentence revoked.

He said President Mohammed Waheed Hassan has started talks with the Islamic ministry, judiciary, attorney general, human rights commission and gender ministry in order to stop ‘‘victims becoming victims of the law.’’

‘‘The government fully understands she is a victim. Since this is an Islamic affair we don’t want to unilaterally say things,’’ Imad said.

The practice of flogging for sex outside marriage has been widely condemned and it is often the woman who is singled out for punishment.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay in 2011 urged Maldives to end the ‘‘degrading’’ practice.

‘‘This practice constitutes one of the most inhumane and degrading forms of violence against women, and should have no place in the legal framework of a democratic country,’’ she said speaking at the Maldives Parliament.

She urged the authorities to change the law that allows flogging.

Maldives is an Indian Ocean archipelago of 300,000 people, all of whom are Sunni Muslims. Practicing or preaching any other religion is illegal.

- See more at: http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/2013/03/01/girl-maldives-faces-flogging-for-premarital-sex/gVDKS59KZ4pM8nPnKSRYlN/story.html#sthash.jStGvYiZ.dpuf

[Tommi]

House passes LGBT positive Violence Against Women Act

Feb. 28, 2013
The House of Representatives passed on Thursday the approved version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which has been praised by LGBT groups as being inclusive to their needs.

The bipartisan vote passed 286 to 138 and included 87 Republicans.

"Today's victory marks a rare occasion when Republicans and Democrats came together to ensure explicit protections in the
federal code for 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity.' It is also the first time that any federal non-discrimination provisions
include the LGBT community," wrote leading LGBT organization Human Rights Campaign in a statement following the vote.

The bill, co-sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy and other Democrats, and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), had already passed the Senate with a 78-22 vote. Many are praising legislators for their robust show of bipartisan action, including President Obama.

"This important step shows what we can do when we come together across party lines to take up a just cause," Obama said.
"The bill passed by the Senate will help reduce homicides that occur from domestic violence, improve the criminal justice
response to rape and sexual assault, address the high rates of dating violence experienced by young women, and provide justice to the most vulnerable among us."

The VAWA provides state and local authorities with grants that effectively serve millions of women across the United States. Now LGBT individuals could be included in the bill's success thanks to three key provision revisions.

Alli McCracken, National Organizer at Codepink in Washington, told 429Magazine after the Senate vote that "you can't have an
actor that denounces violence against women without including all women. That includes women who are a part of the LGBTQ
community, with a particular emphasis on the Q." "Republicans are against [the VAWA] because of the provisions for
Native Americans and LGBT people. It's shocking how blatant representatives are against minorities," McCracken said.

[Jesse]

Kakenya Ntaiya made a deal with her father: She would undergo the traditional Maasai rite of passage of female circumcision if he would let her go to high school. Ntaiya tells the fearless story of continuing on to college, and of working with her village elders to build a school for girls in her community. It’s the educational journey of one that altered the destiny of 125 young women. (Filmed at TEDxMidAtlantic.)
Kakenya Ntaiya refused to accept the continued oppression of women in her Maasai village -- so she built a school that's shifting gender expectations in her community.

http://www.ted.com/talks/kakenya_ntaiya_a_girl_who_demanded_school.html?utm _source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button__2013-03-07

[Kobi]

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — The 17-year-old beaten to death for refusing to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather. The teen dragged by her family to be raped to force her into marrying an elderly man. They are among 39,000 girls forced into marriage every day around the world, sold like cattle to enrich their families.

More than one-third of all girls are married in 42 countries, according to the U.N. Population Fund, referring to females under the age of 18. The highest number of cases occurs in some of the poorest countries, the agency figures show, with the West African nation of Niger at the bottom of the list with 75 percent of girls married before they turn 18. In Bangladesh the figure is 66 percent and in Central African Republic and Chad it is 68 percent.

Most child marriages take place in South Asia and rural sub-Saharan Africa, according to the population fund. In terms of absolute numbers, India, because of its large population, has the most child marriages with child brides in 47 percent of all marriages.

Government statistics in South Sudan show half the girls there aged 15 to 19 are married, with some brides as young as 12 years old.

"The country's widespread child marriage exacerbates South Sudan's pronounced gender gaps in school enrollment, contributes to soaring maternal mortality rates, and violates the right of girls to be free from violence," says a Human Rights Watch report published Thursday ahead of International Women's Day on Friday.

The report blames child marriage in part for an appallingly low female school attendance, with girls making up only 39 percent of primary school students and 30 percent at secondary school.

A UNICEF report this month blamed child marriage in part for poor school attendance figures in Congo, where one in four children are not in school.

Child marriage is not common in South Africa, where prosecutors are investigating what charges can be brought in the case of a 13-year-old epileptic girl who was forced to leave school and marry a 57-year-old traditional healer in January.

Human Rights Watch said that in South Sudan there is a "near total lack of protection" for victims who try to resist marriage or to leave abusive marriages. It called for a coordinated government response including more training for police and prosecutors on girls' rights to protection.

Aguet N. of South Sudan, for example, was married to a 75-year-old man when she was 15 years old, according to testimony she gave to Human Rights Watch.

"This man went to my uncles and paid a dowry of 80 cows. I resisted the marriage. They threatened me," the report said. "They said, 'If you want your siblings to be taken care of, you will marry this man.' I said he is too old for me. They said, 'You will marry this old man whether you like it or not because he has given us something to eat.' They beat me so badly. They also beat my mother because she was against the marriage."

Reducing child marriages is key to achieving U.N. millennium goals to improve child mortality and reduce maternal deaths, according to Malawi's Health Minister Catherine Gotani Hara. She said teen pregnancies accounted for up to 30 percent of maternal deaths in that southern African country.

"By ending early marriages we can avert up to 30 percent of maternal deaths and also reduce the neonatal mortality rate," she said in a statement published by the World Health Organization.

Complications of pregnancy and childbirth are leading causes of death in young women aged 15 to 19 years in developing countries, according to Dr. Flavia Bustreo of the WHO.

Early marriages also will prevent South Sudan from achieving the goal of having women hold 25 percent of government jobs, said Lorna James Elia of the local Voices for Change advocacy group.

She said women activists grouped under a project "Girls, Not Brides," are trying to engage community leaders and traditional chiefs to end early and forced marriages.

Young brides also confront more violence, according to U.N. studies: Girls who marry before they are 18 are more likely to become victims of violence from their partner, with the risk increasing as the age gap between the couple gets larger.

Traditionally, poor families marry off young girls to reduce the family expenses on food, clothing and education. A big incentive can be the dowries older men will pay for a young bride, sometimes hundreds of cows.

Another South Sudan child bride, Ageer M., told Human Rights Watch, "The man I loved did not have cows and my uncles rejected him. My husband paid 120 cows. ... I refused him but they beat me badly and took me by force to him. The man forced me to have sex with him so I had to stay there."

In South Sudan, and some other countries, early marriage is seen as a way to protect girls from sexual violence and ensure that they do not bring dishonor on the family by getting pregnant out of wedlock.

Human Rights Watch called for South Sudan's government to clearly set 18 as the minimum age for marriage. But the country's minister for gender and child affairs, Agnes Kwaje Losuba, said the Child's Act already does that.

"We need to make sure this is implemented," she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/half-girls-south-sudan-forced-marry-140334618.html

[Kobi]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Victims of sexual assault and violence in the military told Congress Wednesday they're afflicted with a slow and uncaring system of justice that too often fails to hold perpetrators accountable and is fraught with institutional bias.

They told a Senate panel examining the military's handling of sexual assault cases that the military justice system is broken and urged Congress to make changes in the law that would stem the rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment that they said are pervasive in the service branches.

Rebekah Havrilla, a former Army sergeant, told the committee that she encountered a "broken" military criminal justice system after she was raped by another service member while serving in Afghanistan. Havrilla described suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and described how her case was eventually closed after senior commanders decided not to pursue charges.

"What we need is a military with a fair and impartial criminal justice system, one that is run by professional and legal experts, not unit commanders," Havrilla said.

BriGette McCoy, a former Army specialist and a Persian Gulf war veteran, said she was raped when she was 18 and at her first duty station. But she did not report it. Three years later, she reported being sexually harassed and asked for an apology and to be removed from working directly with the offender.

"They did remove me from his team and his formal apology consisted of him driving by me on base and saying 'sorry' out of his open car door window," McCoy told the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee.

The subcommittee's hearing comes as members of Congress are expressing outrage over an Air Force general's decision to reverse a guilty verdict in a sexual assault case that is spurring support for legislation that would prevent commanding officers from overturning rulings made by judges and juries at courts-martial proceedings.

Anu Bhagwati of the Service Women's Action Network told the panel that commanders are unable to make impartial decisions because they usually have a professional relationship with the accused and, often times, with the victim as well. Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps captain, said court-martial cases should be left in the hands of "trained, professional, disinterested prosecutors."

Under military law, a commander who convenes a court-martial is known as the convening authority and has the sole discretion to reduce or set aside guilty verdicts and sentences or to reverse a jury's verdict.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered a review of Air Force Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin's decision to overturn the sexual assault conviction against Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, a former inspector general at Aviano Air Base in Italy.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the chairwoman of the military personnel subcommittee, called the Wilkerson case "shocking" and promised to take a hard look at the military justice system. Nearly 2,500 sexual violence cases in the military services were reported in 2011, but only 240 made it to trial, Gillibrand said.

Wilkerson, a former inspector general at Aviano Air Base in Italy, was found guilty on Nov. 2 by a jury of military officers on charges of abusive sexual contact, aggravated sexual assault and three instances of conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman. The victim was a civilian employee. Wilkerson was sentenced to a year in prison and dismissal from the service.

Wilkerson was at the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., until Feb. 26, when Franklin exercised his discretion as the convening authority. Franklin reviewed the case over a three-week period and concluded "that the entire body of evidence was insufficient to meet the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt," Hagel wrote in a March 7 letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

But Hagel told Boxer neither he nor the Air Force secretary is empowered to overrule Franklin, who is the commander of the 3rd Air Force at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Boxer said during testimony before the subcommittee that "immediate steps must be taken to prevent senior commanders from having the ability to unilaterally overturn a decision or sentence by a military court."

In the wake of Franklin's decision, Reps. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, and Patrick Meehan, R-Pa., introduced legislation Tuesday in the House of Representatives that would strip military commanders of the power to overturn legal decisions or lessen sentences. Their bill would amend the Uniform Code of Military Justice to take away the power of a convening authority to dismiss, commute, lessen, or order a rehearing after a panel or judge has found the accused guilty and rendered a punishment.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, plans to introduce legislation soon that would change the Uniform Code of Military Justice by preventing a convening authority from overturning a decision reached by a jury. The legislation also would require the convening authority to issue a written justification for any action.

http://news.yahoo.com/military-sexual-assault-victims-detail-humiliation-154349053--politics.html

[Kobi]

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Conservative Muslim and Roman Catholic countries and liberal Western nations approved a U.N. blueprint to combat violence against women and girls, ignoring strong objections from Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood that it clashed with Islamic principles and sought to destroy the family.

After two weeks of tough and often contentious negotiations, 131 countries joined consensus Friday night on a compromise 17-page document that Michelle Bachelet, the head of the U.N. women's agency, called historic because it sets global standards for action to prevent and end "one of the gravest violations of human rights in the world, the violence that is committed against women and girls."

On Wednesday, the Brotherhood, which has emerged as the most powerful political faction in Egypt since the 2011 uprising, lashed out at the anticipated document for advocating sexual freedoms for women and the right to abortion "under the guise of sexual and reproductive rights." It called the title, on eliminating and preventing all forms of violence against women and girls, "deceitful."

Last week, Egypt proposed an amendment to the text saying that each country is sovereign and can implement the document in accordance with its own laws and customs, a provision strongly opposed by many countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

It was dropped in the final compromise drafted by the meeting's chair. Instead, the final text urges all countries "to strongly condemn all forms of violence against women and girls and to refrain from invoking any custom, tradition and religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination."

When countries were polled on their views on the final draft, there was fear among the declaration's supporters that Egypt would oppose it, which would block the consensus required for adoption.

The head of Egypt's delegation, politician and diplomat Mervat Tallawy, surprised and delighted the overwhelming majority of delegates and onlookers in the crowded U.N. conference room when she ignored the Brotherhood and announced that Egypt would join consensus.

"International soldarity is needed for women's empowerment and preventing this regressive mood, whether in the developing countries or developed, or in the Middle East in particular," Tallawy told two reporters afterwards. "It's a global wave of conservatism, of repression against women, and this paper is a message that if we can get together, hold power together, we can be a strong wave against this conservatism."

Tallawy, who is president of the National Council for Women-Egypt, said she has told this to Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi, who came from the Muslim Brotherhood,

"I believe in women's cause. I don't take money from the government. I work voluntarily. If they want to kick me out they can. But I will not change my belief in women," she said. "Women are the slaves of this age. This is unacceptable, and particularly in our region."

A number of Muslim and Catholic countries including Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Holy See and Honduras expressed reservations about elements of the text — but Libya was the only country to dissociate itself from the final document though it did not block consensus.

Libya's top cleric raised similar concerns to the Muslim Brotherhood, rejecting the document for violating Islamic teachings. The Libyan delegation objected to paragraphs calling for sex education for all adolescents and youth, with appropriate direction from parents, and for priority to programs for girls' education so they can take responsibility for their own lives, "including access to a sustainable livelihood."

At the start of the meeting, Bachelet said data from the World Health Organization and other research shows that an average of 40 percent — and up to 70 per cent of women in some countries — face violence in their lifetimes, and she pointed to recent high-profile attacks on women in India and Pakistan. She said Friday that during the two-week session "countless women and girls around the world have suffered violence."

When the Commission on the Status of Women took up violence against women a decade ago, governments were unable to reach agreement on a final document because of differences over sex education, a woman's right to reproductive health, and demands for an exception for traditional, cultural and religious practices.

The final document approved Friday reaffirms that women and men have the right to enjoy all human rights "on an equal basis," recommits governments to comprehensive sex education, calls for sexual and reproductive health services such as emergency contraception and safe abortion for victims of violence, and calls on government to criminalize violence against women and punish gender-related killings. But it dropped references to sexual orientation and gender identity.

Terri Robl, the U.S. deputy representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, called the agreement an important step but said the text is "only a beginning." She expressed regret at its failure to state that ending violence must apply to all women, regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity, or to refer specifically to "intimate partner violence."

While the document is not legally binding, Britain's U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said "it sets a certain standard by which all member states can monitor their performance and can be monitored by others."

http://news.yahoo.com/un-adopts-plan-combat-violence-against-women-012129730.html

[Kobi]

The Maasai tribe of Kenya has shown the traditional rite of passage for girls of female circumcision can be replaced with a new tradition.

The Alternative Rite of Passage campaign began with Africa Schools of Kenya (ASK) in the Esiteti region of Kenya last year. The Maasai of Esiteti are a model for the rest of the country and the continent, says Teri Gabrielsen, ASK executive director.

ASK has launched a 42-day crowdsourcing campaign to raise funds for the expansion of Alternative Rite of Passage.

The first ceremony was held in August 2012 with 52 Maasai girls becoming women without “cutting.”

Gabrielsen recalled the words of Nelly, a 14-year-old Maasai girl.

“I was going to be circumcised, but I told my dad all the negative things about FGM [female genital mutilation] and my dad agreed. He said, ‘I won’t circumcise you and I wont circumcise your sisters either.’”

Three times a year girls come home from boarding schools and are at risk of being circumcised or married off.

Approximately 150 girls will reach puberty this year in Esiteti, and ASK will hold three ceremonies each year. The two-day alternative rite ceremony takes place in one of the classrooms at the Esiteti School.

The goal of ASK’s campaign is to raise $50,000 to sustain Alternative Rite of Passage programs for at least five years, establishing the groundwork for tribes to carry them on independently.

“ASK has developed many educational programs for the community of Esiteti, but never have we been involved with a program as exciting as this one,” Gabrielsen said. “In the eyes of the Esiteti community, once the pilot program was in place, their girls were seen as adults and safeguarded from FGM.”

Phides Mukishoi, head mistress of ASK’s Esiteti School, said she is proud to be a part of ASK.

“I am happy to be training and teaching the girls about health and education,” Mukishoi said. “When they look at me, they see a Maasai woman who is educated, and it makes them proud to see me care for them.”

“I value Phides for her dedication to working with the girls every day and night, living away from her own family in not-so-suitable dwellings in order to protect and work with the girls,” Gabrielsen said. “She is happy to do the work.”

----------------------------------------------------------------

Maasai Women End Traditional Female Circumcision

Two-day ceremony marks end of genital mutilation for 52 young Maasai girls

In a traditional two-day ceremony in Kenya, the Maasai, one of the oldest cultures in Africa, changed the fate of 52 young girls in a historic alternative rite of passage performed without female circumcision.

Maasai men and women who accepted the new ceremony took a monumental leap forward in health and education for their culture, causing reactions across the globe.

Three Maasai women were selected by the African Schools of Kenya (ASK) to talk with the girls about issues ranging from their basic human rights as young women to reasons for using birth control.

Meals were prepared and delivered to the girls, and they stayed together overnight in the classroom on Aug. 27.

“There was no holding back on the information given to the 52 girls attending the first Alternative Rites of Passage without cutting,” said Teri Gabrielsen, founder of ASK, which funds educational courses in Africa.

The 52 girls, including the chief’s own daughters, paraded through their village early Saturday morning wearing their traditional all-black dresses and crowns, slowly walking to the school room for the very first two-day ARP ceremony.

Special recognition was given to the four cutters: They each received a milking goat for their willingness to participate in the ceremony and for supporting the “non-circumcision” of the girls.

On day two, the mothers helped their daughters get dressed in their traditional ceremonial dresses and crowns. The two-day ARP ended with ceremonial dancing, a feast, and the presentation of certificates acknowledging each girl entering womanhood without being circumcised.

Female circumcision, widely known as female genital mutilation (FGM), is illegal in Kenya and is punishable by law, yet it is still practiced in many countries worldwide.

Many regions in Africa and some countries in Asia and the Middle East widely practice the ritualistic procedure, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Traditionally, young women who had not yet been circumcised were ostracized by their peers. The women who had endured the unlawful procedure were considered acceptable members of society and were deemed suitable for marriage, as it increased their value in the community because the procedure is considered to be customary.

Instruments traditionally used to perform the cut are sharp metal tools, knives, and other crude objects, and the procedure is usually not carried out by trained medical professionals. The effects of FGM can severely burden the women and often bring on medical complications, placing additional obstacles on the health services and systems in their countries.

The physical pain resulting from the practice has immeasurable psychological impact on these young girls, who look to the adults as well as their peers for solutions. This year, educated Maasai women are avoiding the risk of the physical and psychological damage associated with female circumcision by participating in the first ARP of its kind.

Psychological damage of FGM

Tonte Ikoluba is a tribal descendant of a family who practiced the age-old custom of circumcision in Nigeria. She is from the Ijaw tribe and is now a social worker living in New York. Ikoluba participated in the ritualistic rites of passage at the age of 13 with great trepidation.

“I was 13 years old when I was circumcised, and both of my parents as well as my grandmother were with me and they prepared me for the traditional ceremony,” said Ikoluba.

“I knew it was something that had to be done, but I was scared because some people died or got very sick afterward. I was told by my family that I could not be a full woman until my male part was cut off.

“Some people ran away and so I wanted to run away, but my mother assured me that I should not be scared. She said she would hold my hand and that I would be okay.”

Ikoluba described her experience of being circumcised, saying that while she was being cut, she felt as if she was going to die. She described the complications that came after the procedure.

“It was very painful to urinate after the cutting. I had infections and fever and lots of nightmares. I later found out that a lot of girls did not go through with it and they turned out to be okay,” said Ikoluba.

“I felt tricked. I was told I was going to be a complete woman and then found out they actually made me incomplete. I am now missing something important—my womanhood.”

According to H. Scott, a registered nurse and maternity nurse in New York City, “FGM is a horror and the more enlightenment shed upon this ritual, the better. I have had my share of labor patients who have suffered this atrocity and they suffer that much more during delivery when their scar tissue tears. Some have to be c-sectioned. … Makes my heart cry.”

As the suffering of young women continues to surface in cultural hamlets across the globe, studies and personal opinion continue to find no sensible reason for female circumcision, considering it to be an act of violence against women.

According to the WHO website, it is estimated that 100 million–140 million women and girls have already been subjected to some form of FGM.

Ikoluba is a resident volunteer for the Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation (CAGeM) in New York City. New York State has the second largest population of FGM victims next to California, according to the CAGeM website.

“Female mutilation is against the law, but people are still dying from it,” said Ikoluba. “Just earlier this year, one girl died from the bleeding and her sister ran away from our village to come to a CAGeM shelter because she was next in line. They just ignore the law. Nobody goes to jail, nobody gets arrested.

“I recently attended a conference in New York hosted by CAGeM . I heard them talk about a free surgery and hospital service for victims of FGM. I did some research on my own and found that I could regain feeling and reduce the pain by having the surgery. Until then, I never knew I would be able to feel complete again. I know I can never be 100 percent complete, but I want to be as close to it as possible.”

Ikoluba applied for the waiting list for the surgery. She did some fundraising with the Restoring the Rose Walkathon in New York, and she was put on the waiting list in December.

With the influx of immigrants that come to the United States from countries that continue the practice, girls who become United States citizens are at risk of family pressure to perform their native cultural rites of passage.

A study in the United Kingdom is mapping the current situation and trends of FGM in 27 European Union member states and Croatia. The study was launched this year upon the request of EU commissioner Viviane Reding, according to the European Institute for Gender Equality website (EIGE).

The triumphant stand of the young Maasai girls may send a message of change to families who are weighing the facts against the myths and current findings about the practice in their own rites of passage ceremonies.

Gabrielsen of ASK, Maasai elder and director of ASK chief James Ole Kamente, local grassroots organization Voices of Hope, and a resident nurse from Loitokitok General Hospital in Kenya all fully participated in an ARP ceremony, leading in making a change in the current practice of female circumcision and the eradication of the practice entirely.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/maasai-women-end-traditional-female-circumcision-299742.html

[femmeInterrupted]

Came across these images... it doesn't take much to deconstruct them in terms of how women are situated and portrayed. These are mainstream fashion ads.

Hello rape culture.

http://rantagainsttherandom.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/gross.jpg?w=490&h=306

[Kobi]

Came across these images... it doesn't take much to deconstruct them in terms of how women are situated and portrayed. These are mainstream fashion ads.

Hello rape culture.

http://rantagainsttherandom.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/gross.jpg?w=490&h=306


Ok these look like more than rape culture. These look like Law and Order - SUV photos.

[femmeInterrupted]

Ok these look like more than rape culture. These look like Law and Order - SUV photos.


Exactly!! These are mainstream images that depict women ( and parts of women, that's the other thing: how often women are portrayed in pieces/parts, disconnected from the whole) in varying states of victimization. They are either unconscious or prone, suggesting ( and reinforcing the norm of) total passivity or victimization.

i've been feeling really isolated in my "is it just me, or is that FUCKED up?!?!" moments. :blink:

[Kobi]

Exactly!! These are mainstream images that depict women ( and parts of women, that's the other thing: how often women are portrayed in pieces/parts, disconnected from the whole) in varying states of victimization. They are either unconscious or prone, suggesting ( and reinforcing the norm of) total passivity or victimization.

i've been feeling really isolated in my "is it just me, or is that FUCKED up?!?!" moments. :blink:


It is not you. It is FUCKED up.

What is sad is our socialization as women, the sexism and misogyny, is so internalized and so institutionalized we dont always see it for what it is. Thus, we play into it, we unknowingly (I hope) encourage it, and yet we seem flabbergasted when women are raped, battered and killed. Hello?

The discussions we are having about the multitude of ways in which women are victimized are the same exact discussions women were having back in the 1800's. That is pretty freakin disgusting.

[Kobi]

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/9ljbwAVh99TJ_sPbRBwMDw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9Mjk4O2NyPTE7Y3c9NDUwO2R4PTA7ZH k9MDtmaT11bGNyb3A7aD0yOTg7cT04NTt3PTQ1MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2013-04-14T041221Z_1_CBRE93D0BON00_RTROPTP_2_CNEWS-US-PAKISTAN-FEUDALS-INSIGHT.JPG

HYDERABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - When Veero Kolhi made the asset declaration required of candidates for Pakistan's May elections, she listed the following items: two beds, five mattresses, cooking pots and a bank account with life savings of 2,800 rupees ($28).

While she may lack the fortune that is the customary entry ticket to Pakistani politics, Kolhi can make a claim that may resonate more powerfully with poor voters than the wearily familiar promises of her rivals.

For Kolhi embodies a new phenomenon on the campaign trail - she is the first contestant to have escaped the thrall of a feudal-style land owner who forced his workers to toil in conditions akin to modern-day slavery.

"The landlords are sucking our blood," Kolhi told Reuters at her one-room home of mud and bamboo on the outskirts of the southern city of Hyderabad.

"Their managers behave like pimps - they take our daughters and give them to the landlords."

To her supporters, Kolhi's stand embodies a wider hope that the elections - Pakistan's first transition between elected civilian governments - will be a step towards a more progressive future for a country plagued by Islamic militancy, frequent political gridlock and the worsening persecution of minorities.

To skeptics, the fact that Kolhi has no realistic chance of victory is merely further evidence that even the landmark May 11 vote will offer only a mirage of change to a millions-strong but largely invisible rural underclass.

Yet there is no doubt that hers is a remarkable journey.

A sturdy matriarch in her mid-50s who has 20 grandchildren, Kolhi -- a member of Pakistan's tiny Hindu minority -- is the ultimate outsider in an electoral landscape dominated by wealthy male candidates fluent in the art of back room deals.

Possessed of a ready, raucous laugh, but unable to write more than her name, Kolhi was once a "bonded laborer," the term used in Pakistan for an illegal but widely prevalent form of contemporary serfdom in which entire families toil for years to pay often spurious debts.

Since making her escape in the mid-1990s, Kolhi has lobbied the police and courts to release thousands of others from the pool of indebted workers in her native Sindh province, the vast majority of whom are fellow Hindus.

On April 5, Kolhi crossed a new threshold in her own odyssey when she stood on the steps of a colonial-era courthouse in Hyderabad and brandished a document officials had just issued, authorizing her to run for the provincial assembly.

With no rival party to back her, Kolhi's independent run may make barely a dent at the ballot box in Sindh, a stronghold of President Asif Ali Zardari's ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

But her beat-the-odds bravado has lit a flame for those who adore her the most: families she has helped liberate from lives as vassals.

"Once I only drank black tea, but now I am free I can afford tea with milk," said Thakaro Bheel, who escaped from his landlord a decade ago and now lives in Azad Nagar, a community of former bonded laborers on the edge of Hyderabad. "These days I make my own decisions. All that is thanks to Veero."

BAREFOOT IN THE NIGHT

Like millions of the landless, Kolhi's ordeal began a generation ago when drought struck her home in the Thar desert bordering India, forcing her parents to move to a lusher belt of Sindh in search of work harvesting sunflowers or chilies.

Kolhi was married as a teenager but her husband fell into debt and she was forced to work 10-hour days picking cotton, gripped by a fear that their landlord might choose a husband for Ganga, her daughter, who would soon be ten years old.

One night Kolhi crept past armed guards and walked barefoot to a village to seek help. Her husband was beaten as punishment for her escape, Kolhi said, but she managed to contact human rights activists who wrote to police on her behalf.

Officers were reluctant to confront the landlord but they relented after Kolhi staged a three-day hunger strike at their station. More than 40 people were freed.

"I was very scared, but I hoped that I could win freedom for myself and my family," said Kolhi. "That's why I kept on running."

Now Kolhi spends her days careering along dirt roads in a battered Suzuki minivan decorated with stickers of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Latin American revolutionary, on her quest for votes. Her only luxury: Gold Leaf, a brand of cigarette. Her only campaign equipment: an old megaphone.

While Kolhi clearly enjoys meeting supporters - greeting women by placing two palms on their bowed heads in a traditional gesture of protection - she has still only reached a fraction of her constituency's 133,000 voters.

The favorite remains Sharjeel Memon, an influential businessman and PPP stalwart. Memon was not available for comment.

DAUGHTERS FOR SALE

Despite the struggle Kolhi faces, the fact she is able to run at all has emboldened campaigners for workers' rights in Sindh.

Even remote areas of the province have not been immune to the influence of a more assertive media and judiciary that have reshaped national politics during tumultuous years following a 1999 army coup and a transition to democracy in 2008.

"The landlords are afraid of court cases so they do not abuse and torture people as much as before," said Lalee Kolhi, another former bonded laborer turned activist, who is no relation to Veero Kolhi.

Yet in some areas, land owners can still exploit a symbiotic relationship with the bureaucracy, police and courts to deprive workers of rights and attempt to sway their votes.

Although Veero Kolhi works with a local organization that says it has helped rescue some 26,000 indebted workers in the last 12 years, several estimates put the total figure of bonded laborers in Pakistan at roughly eight million.

Not all landlords are tyrants, but the arrival last month of an extended family of 63 share-croppers at Azad Nagar, the village for freed workers, provided a glimpse of the timeworn tricks they use to ensure debts keep on growing.

Lakhi Bheel produced a scrap torn from an exercise book that declared he had accumulated obligations of 99,405 rupees after toiling for three years.

Bheel said he had decided to make a break for freedom after the land owner threatened to sell the family's daughters in return for bride prices.

"I didn't eat meat once in three years," Bheel said, adding that shotgun-toting guards had sometimes roughed up workers. "We had to pay half the salaries of the men who were beating us."

Kolhi's supporters say the only way to end the oppression in Sindh would be to give destitute workers their own plots of land. But as long as the feudal class retains political influence, talk of land reform remains taboo.

Undaunted, Kolhi -- bedecked in a garland of red roses and jasmine -- launched her shot at office with an ultimatum.

"First we will ask the landlords to obey the law, and if they refuse we will take them to court," she said, her voice rising with emotion. "We will continue our struggle until the last bonded laborer is freed."

http://news.yahoo.com/insight-once-landlords-serf-pakistani-woman-enters-election-034349719.html

[Kobi]

As news of the beastly attack on the girl came out, a "deeply disturbed" Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the "shameful incident" has "once again reiterated the need for society to look deep within and work to root out the evil of rape and other such crimes from our midst".

The news once again bought angry protesters out of their homes. Many massed at the hospital where the girl was warded since Wednesday after her family rescued her from the house of her abductor in Gandhi Nagar in East Delhi.

When the traumatised girl was on Friday evening shifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) from Swami Dayanand Hospital for better medical attention, demonstrators gathered there too and shouted slogans against police and demanded death for the accused.

Delhi, described as India's "rape capital" has seen over 390 rapes cases in three months as compared to 152 cases in the corresponding period last year.

A doctor said he and his colleagues had never seen such a brutal rape. They said a bottle and pieces of candle were found thrust into the private parts of the girl.

Anger against Delhi Police mounted after the girl's father, a mason, said they failed to even register his complaint when his daughter went missing.

"We went to police to register a FIR (First Information Report) but they refused. They never tried to find her, and instead drove us away," said the distraught man.

He said when the family finally found the girl Wednesday morning after hearing her screams, a policeman offered the family Rs 2,000 to keep mum.

Meanwhile, two Delhi Police officials were suspended for "misbehaving" with the family of the five-year-old rape victim, while an assistant commissioner of police (ACP) was suspended for slapping a girl protestor, said police on Friday.

http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/delhi-rape-victim-battles-for-life-accused-identified-3-cops-suspended_843193.html

[Kobi]

*trigger warning*


NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian police arrested a second man on Monday in connection with the rape and torture of a five-year-old girl in New Delhi and parliament was adjourned twice amid an uproar about the crime which has rekindled popular fury at widespread sexual violence.

Media reported several other attacks on children over the weekend, including that of a nine-year old girl in the north-eastern state of Assam, who had her throat slit after being gang-raped, TV channels said.

Brutal sex crimes are common in India, which has a population of 1.2 billion. New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures.

But most such crimes go unreported and justice is slow, according to social activists, who say successive governments have done little to ensure the safety of women and children.

Activists planned a fourth day of street action amid heavy security in Delhi after protesters tussled with police and tried to reach the homes of India's leaders at the weekend. The protesters are calling for Delhi's police chief to resign.

The lower house of parliament was adjourned twice after opposition politicians rushed into the building, some demanding discussion on the rape case. Others were protesting against corruption and other issues.

"Though parliament has recently passed tougher legislation to prevent rapes, the evil has not abated and such incidents are still on the rise throughout the country," House Speaker Meira Kumar said before the house was adjourned.

The upper house of parliament was due to hold a debate on violence against women in the afternoon.

http://news.yahoo.com/second-man-arrested-india-girl-rape-chaos-parliament-074552630.html

[girl_dee]

i wish i had not read that.

[Kobi]

NEW DELHI (AP) — A child disappears. Police are called. Nothing happens.

Child rights activists say the rape last week of a 5-year-old girl is just the latest case in which Indian police failed to take urgent action on a report of a missing child.

More than 90,000 children go missing in India each year; more than 34,000 are never found. Some parents say they lost crucial time because police wrongly dismissed their missing children as runaways, refused to file reports or treated the cases as nuisances.

Formal police complaints were registered in only one-sixth of missing child cases in 2011, said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer with Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or the Save the Childhood Movement. He said police resist registering cases because they want to keep crime figures low, and that parents are often too poor to bribe them to reconsider.

Ribhu said the first few hours after a child goes missing are the most crucial. "The police can cordon off nearby areas, issue alerts at railway and bus stations, and step up vigilance to catch the kidnappers," he said.

Activists say delays let traffickers move children to neighboring states, where the police don't have jurisdiction. There is no national database of missing children that state police can reference.

Police have insisted that most of missing children are runways fleeing grinding poverty.

"It's easy enough to blame the police for not finding the children. Some of the parents do not even possess a photograph of the child. Or they will come up with a years-old picture. It becomes difficult when there's not even a photograph to work with," Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said last month when asked about complaints on police inaction in investigating case of missing children.

Many cases involved poor migrant construction workers who move from site to site around the city, Bhagat said.

India's Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath told Parliament last month that the problem of missing children had assumed "alarming" proportions. The National Crime Records Bureau reported that 34,406 missing children were never found in 2011, up from 18,166 in 2009.

Activists say some children are trafficked and forced to beg on the streets. Some work on farms or factories as forced labor and others have their organs harvested and sold. The activists say young girls are pushed into the sex trade or sold for marriage.

"The government is just not ready to confront the issue of trafficking or missing children. And this gets reflected in the apathy of the police in dealing with cases of missing children," said Ribhu, the lawyer.

In 2006, the Central Bureau of Investigation said at least 815 criminal gangs were kidnapping children for begging, prostitution or ransom.

The Save the Childhood Movement said police have not cracked a single one of those syndicates.

Shantha Sinha, who heads the government's National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, acknowledged that much remained to be done to make police take cases of missing children seriously.

http://news.yahoo.com/indian-girls-rape-highlights-police-apathy-103156990.html

[Kobi]

* Trigger Warning*

5-year-old girl has died after being raped in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, an official said Tuesday, in the latest in a series of brutal attacks that have sparked outrage in the country.

The girl suffered cardiac arrest and died late Monday at a hospital in Nagpur city in neighbouring Maharashtra state where she was being treated for injuries from the April 18 assault, said Bharat Yadav, collector for Seoni district, where the attack occurred.

Two men have been arrested in connection with the attack, he said.

The girl was lured by one of the men to a farm, where she was then raped by the other man, who was a friend of her parents, Yadav said. The parents, poor construction workers, were at work when the attack occurred, he said.

Ravi Manadiar, an administrator at the hospital, said the girl suffered a brain injury when the men tried to smother her cries and was in a coma from April 20 until she died.

In Nagpur, the mother of the girl was inconsolable.

“The court should give them the strictest punishment ever,” she sobbed Tuesday.

“These men should be burned alive so that the whole world will see how such criminals ought to be punished,” she said, wiping her tears with the corner of her sari.

About 40 supporters of the opposition Congress party held a rally in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, to protest what they said was a rise in violence against women in the state.

They burned an effigy of the state’s top elected official, Chief Minister Shivraj SIngh Chouhan, who belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Earlier this month, another 5-year-old girl was kidnapped, raped and tortured by two men who then abandoned her in a locked room in New Delhi. She is still recovering at a hospital in the city.

Police refused to register a case when the girl’s parents reported that their daughter was missing. Hundreds of people protested outside police headquarters in New Delhi for three days, angry over allegations of police inaction and indifference to the parents’ complaints.

Indian media have begun to report sexual assaults more aggressively since the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in December. That attack triggered outrage across India about the treatment of women in the country, and spurred the government to pass tougher laws for crimes against women, including the death penalty for repeat offenders or for rapes that lead to the victim’s death.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/girl-5-dies-after-rape-in-india/article11628161/

[Kobi]

NEW DELHI (AP) — The phones were ringing nonstop in the tiny, windowless office in downtown New Delhi, with urgent appeals from desperate women.

Indian Rape Law Offers Desperate Last Resort The Wall Street Journal
Indian magazine editor arrested on sexual assault charges Reuters

One caller, speaking in whispers, said her husband beat her regularly because she failed to bring in enough dowry. Another woman said her teenage daughter was being stalked by a neighbor and needed legal advice.

Established in the wake of last year's gang rape and murder of a young New Delhi woman, the government hotline is part of a wave of change since the case forced the country to confront its appalling treatment of women.

The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, was heading home with a male friend after an evening showing of the movie "Life of Pi" when six men lured them onto a private bus. With no one else in sight, they beat the man with a metal bar, raped the woman and used the bar to inflict massive internal injuries.

The pair were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later.

Indian media named her "Nirbhaya," or "fearless," as rape victims cannot be identified under Indian law. She became a rallying cry for tens of thousands protesting the treatment of women.

New laws have made stalking, voyeurism and sexual harassment a crime. There is now a fast-track court for rape cases. In some ways, the case cracked a cultural taboo surrounding discussion of sexual violence in a country where rape is often viewed as a woman's personal shame to bear.

But for so many women in India's urban centers like New Delhi and Mumbai, the new laws have not made the streets any safer. And in such a conservative country with patriarchal traditions, it will take more than a year to erode generations of devastating sexism.

"Out on the streets, I find men staring at me, passing lewd comments," said Barnali Barman, a 23-year-old business executive in New Delhi. "I find people following me as I get down from the train and walk to my office."

Nirbhaya's father told The Associated Press he takes comfort in the changes his daughter's suffering have brought.

But, he said, "not a day passes when we don't shed tears."

"Our tears are not for her death, but for what she suffered," he said in an interview from the family's three-room apartment in the outer suburbs of New Delhi.

"We just can't forget how she suffered at the hands of these men," he added, his voice thickening. On the wall hung a faded piece of cloth — an award for bravery given posthumously to his daughter.

His wife, a pale shadow, backs out of the room at any mention of her daughter.

The assailants were tried relatively quickly in a country where sexual assault cases often languish for years. Four defendants were sentenced to death. Another hanged himself in prison, though his family insists he was killed. And an 18-year-old who was a juvenile at the time of the attack was sentenced to three years in a reform home.

In India, the arrival of a daughter is a tragic event in many families. Illegal sex-selective abortions over decades have left the country with a ratio of 914 girls under age 6 for every 1,000 boys. Girls get less medical care and less education.

Still, in the last two decades as the Indian economy boomed, rising education levels and inflation have led to larger numbers of women joining the work force. But the deep-rooted social attitudes toward women have remained largely unchanged.

The result is that women's complaints of rape and sexual abuse remain drastically underreported. Families often do not make a police complaint to avoid the stigma that befalls the victim and her family.

"The criminals know that the Indian police and courts will take 10 years or more to prosecute them," said Tanpreet Singh, a 26-year-old New Delhi businessman. "The system is corrupt and many succeed in bribing their way out."

For all the attention given to Nirbhaya's case, daily indignities and abuse continue unabated for many women, particularly the poor.

"Indian society has to change its mindset about women," said Chaitali, a field worker with Jagori, a women's rights group, who goes by one name. "That is something that will take more than a year. If we are lucky it will take a couple of generations."

The women's hotline aims to speed things up. On a recent evening, six women wearing headsets sat at computer terminals, speaking in gentle tones to agitated callers.

"Most of the calls are from women who are suffering some kind of abuse — sexual harassment, domestic violence, stalking, or obscene phone calls," said Khadijah Faruqui, a veteran women's rights activist who heads the helpline project.

In cases of domestic violence, or where there is imminent danger to the caller's life, the helpline informs the police, or women's groups nearby, so that they can reach the scene and intervene. The helpline also offers legal advice and follow-up calls.

In a little less than a year, the helpline has handled more than half a million distress calls from women in trouble, Faruqui said.

Activists say one outcome of the public debate is that women are coming forward to register complaints against sexual abuse.

There has been a surge in the number of rapes being reported: Between January and October this year, there have been 1,330 rapes reported in Delhi and its suburbs, compared with the 706 for the whole of 2012, according to government figures.

Several recent, high-profile cases also suggest women feel more comfortable going public with reports of sexual assaults — an important breakthrough in a country where men feel emboldened to commit crimes because they know women face the stigma.

Last month, the high-profile editor of an Indian magazine known for exposing abuses of power was arrested after a young female colleague accused him of sexually assaulting her in a hotel elevator during a conference.

The allegations against Tehelka Editor Tarun Tejpal have touched a nerve in part because he is the face of a publication that has pushed Indian society to vanquish corruption and confront the scourge of sexual violence.

Women's rights also took on unprecedented significance in India's state elections last week, with the three main parties adopting a "womanifesto" — a list of six priority actions to protect the freedom and safety of women in the capital.

"Today, every political party is promising safety and security as the first commitment to women in the country," said Ranjana Kumari, a women's rights activist with New Delhi's Centre for Social Research. "This was something which they never thought was necessary."

Kumari said there are glimmers of hope as women become aware that they no longer have to put up with sexual harassment.

"Instead of a fearful silence," she said, "there is an openness without the inhibitions of social shame."

___
http://news.yahoo.com/since-delhi-rape-women-see-key-changes-074424448.html

[RockOn]

This has bothered me ever since I read it on the news about 3 months ago.
I must confess, I did not check to see if someone else had already posted
about this little girl's death. A mere child.

I cannot say on this forum how I truly feel in detail about this and what needs to be done.

Breaks my heart to think of what happened to this girl child. Takes a sick freak of a man to do something this horrible to an innocent. And no one could ever convince me he did not know he was killing her - not in a million years.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SANAA (Reuters) - An eight-year-old Yemeni girl died of internal bleeding on her wedding night after marrying a man five times her age, a social activist and two local residents said, in a case that has caused an outcry in the media and revived debate about child brides.

Arwa Othman, head of Yemen House of Folklore and a leading rights campaigner, said the girl, identified only as Rawan, was married to a 40-year-old man late last week in the town of Meedi in Hajjah province in northwestern Yemen.

"On the wedding night and after intercourse, she suffered from bleeding and uterine rupture which caused her death," Othman told Reuters. "They took her to a clinic but the medics couldn't save her life."

Othman said authorities had not taken any action against the girl's family or her husband.

A local security official in the provincial town of Haradh denied any such incident had taken place. He did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

But two Meedi residents contacted by Reuters confirmed the incident and said that local tribal chiefs had tried to cover up the incident when news first broke, warning a local journalist against covering the story.

Many poor families in Yemen marry off young daughters to save on the costs of bringing up a child and earn extra money from the dowry given to the girl.

A U.N. report released in January revealed the extent of the country's poverty, saying that 10.5 million of Yemen's 24 million people lacked sufficient food supplies, and 13 million had no access to safe water and basic sanitation.

Human Rights Watch urged Yemen's government in December 2011 to ban marriages of girls under the age of 18, warning it deprived child brides of education and harmed their health.

Quoting United Nations and government data, HRW said nearly 14 percent of Yemeni girls were married before the age of 15 and 52 percent before the age of 18. The group said many Yemeni child brides-to-be are kept from school when they reach puberty.

Discussions on the issue were shelved by political turmoil following protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011 that led to his ouster.

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Mahmoud Habboush; editing by Mike Collett-Whi

[*Anya*]

Controversial Morocco rape law axed.

Last updated Jan 23, 2014, 5:37 AM PST

BBC NEWS

Violence against women and gender inequality are the subjects of frequent demonstrations in Rabat.

The parliament of Morocco has unanimously amended an article of the penal code that allowed rapists of underage girls to avoid prosecution by marrying their victims.

The move follows intensive lobbying by activists for better protection of young rape victims. The amendment has been welcomed by rights groups.

Article 475 of the penal code generated unprecedented public criticism.

It was first proposed by Morocco's Islamist-led government a year ago.

But the issue came to public prominence in 2012 when 16-year-old Amina Filali killed herself after being forced to marry her rapist.

She accused Moustapha Fellak, who at the time was about 25, of physical abuse after they married, which he denies. After seven months of marriage, Ms Filali swallowed rat poison.

The case shocked many people in Morocco, received extensive media coverage and sparked protests in the capital Rabat and other cities.

Article 475 provides for a prison term of one to five years for anyone who "abducts or deceives" a minor "without violence, threat or fraud, or attempts to do so".

But the second clause of the article specifies that when the victim marries the perpetrator, "he can no longer be prosecuted except by persons empowered to demand the annulment of the marriage and then only after the annulment has been proclaimed".

This effectively prevents prosecutors from independently pursuing rape charges.

In conservative rural parts of Morocco, an unmarried girl or woman who has lost her virginity - even through rape - is considered to have dishonoured her family and no longer suitable for marriage. Some families believe that marrying the rapist addresses these problems.

While welcoming the move, rights groups say that much still needs to be done to promote gender equality, protect women and outlaw child marriage in the North African country.

"It's a very important step. But it's not enough," Fatima Maghnaoui, who heads a group supporting women victims of violence, told the AFP news agency.

"We are campaigning for a complete overhaul of the penal code for women."

BBC © 2014

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

"The television show “Democracy Now” had a heartbreaking segment Friday about a teenager whose school accused her of lewd conduct” and sent her to disciplinary school after she reported her rape."


http://www.businessinsider.com.au/rachel-bradshaw-beans-rape-in-texas-2014-1


The hatred and violence against girls and women each and every day will never stop with only women and a handful of men giving a damn.

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

LINCOLN — She made an agonizing decision two years ago to give birth to a child who was conceived during a rape.

Today, the 20-year-old Norfolk, Neb., woman has a beautiful toddler, but a different sort of agony. Recently a judge granted child visitation rights to the man who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20140126/NEWS/140128981/1685#victim-wants-rapist-s-parental-rights-restricted

And the hits just keep on coming...

[Kobi]

LINCOLN — She made an agonizing decision two years ago to give birth to a child who was conceived during a rape.

Today, the 20-year-old Norfolk, Neb., woman has a beautiful toddler, but a different sort of agony. Recently a judge granted child visitation rights to the man who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20140126/NEWS/140128981/1685#victim-wants-rapist-s-parental-rights-restricted

And the hits just keep on coming...

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/bf/27/54/bf2754f6673eb3a37639b736b2cda20f.jpg

[Sweet Bliss]

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/bf/27/54/bf2754f6673eb3a37639b736b2cda20f.jpg

This is sickening.

Which 31 states?

[Words]

In conservative rural parts of Morocco, an unmarried girl or woman who has lost her virginity - even through rape - is considered to have dishonoured her family and no longer suitable for marriage. Some families believe that marrying the rapist addresses these problems.

Just to be clear...

In Islamic societies, it is still custom for girls/women to remain virgins until they marry and for a girl who is no longer a virgin to be considered 'spoilt goods'. Although most families would indeed feel a sense of shame if one of their females were raped, PART of the reason for their agreeing to her marrying her rapist would be to ensure that she was taken care of in the future. I know it sounds heartless, but you have to understand that even today, in most Islamic societies it is the men who take care of the women and that with no social welfare system to turn to, a girl is reliant first on her father, brothers (if no father is present), and then husband for her every need. Add to that the fact that many rape cases involve a member of the extended family as opposed to an absolute stranger, then I can understand, kind of, why families often view marriage between the victim and the rapist as the only viable solution. (This view is based on over 20 years living amongst Muslims - both liberal and conservative - in the Middle East.)

Words

[Kobi]

This is sickening.

Which 31 states?


I like knowing from whence things came. The above graphic is from a 2012 CNN story (http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/22/opinion/prewitt-rapist-visitation-rights/) where Shauna Prewitt, a Chicago lawyer responded to Todd Akins "legitimate rape rarely results in pregnancy" comments with the story of her own rape which did result in pregnancy.

In an article in The Georgetown Law Journal in 2010, (http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/pdf/98-3/Prewitt.PDF) entitled "Giving Birth To A Rapists Child, A Discussion And Analysis Of The Limited Legal Protections Afforded To Women Who Become Mothers Through Rape", Prewitt explains how states have hurried to enact laws to cover the termination of a rapists legal rights in order to enable adoption, but have fallen woefully short when it comes to aid for raped women who choose to raise their raped conceived children.

Fascinating reading if you are well versed in legalese.

In 2012, the 19 states (http://veracitystew.com/2012/08/26/nightmare-31-states-allow-paternal-rights-for-rapists/) that bar rapists from custodial and visitation rights are: Alaska, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, New jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Since then, a number of states have been attempting (but I cant find actual success) to enact such provisions such as Arkansas, Colorado, and Florida.

I found a really cool site from the Colorado government called "A State By State Review Of the Parental Rights Of Fathers Who Conceive A Child By Rape." Getting past the odd title, I like it because it has a chart (Kobi likes charts) of all the states, the ones with statutes and what the statutes are for i.e. adoption, custody, termination of parental rights, visitation, criminal. It also shows if conviction is required, and the burden of proof i.e. clear and convincing evidence, preponderance of evidence, beyond reasonable doubt.

http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&blobheadername2=Content-Type&blobheadervalue1=inline%3B+filename%3D%22Parental+ Rights+State+Law+Table.pdf%22&blobheadervalue2=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1251865795731&ssbinary=true

[Sweet Bliss]

Thank you for all the background Kobi!

We all need to get back to our radical change roots and take back our personal power and decision making rights over our lives, bodies, children, families etc.

This is making me nauseous.

What can I do today Kobi, to create a change in my state?

[silkepus]

I saw this on tumblr, but it can't be true. Does anyone know if it is? Its almost to infuriating to consider.


https://24.media.tumblr.com/f3e4a9e3af86a3fad20bf185cf6ae4b0/tumblr_mzcjpdkNst1qm6speo1_500.jpg

[*Anya*]

I saw this on tumblr, but it can't be true. Does anyone know if it is? Its almost to infuriating to consider.


https://24.media.tumblr.com/f3e4a9e3af86a3fad20bf185cf6ae4b0/tumblr_mzcjpdkNst1qm6speo1_500.jpg

Yes, he is facing 10 years. He is not yet convicted that I could find.


Steubenville Rapist Released While Hacker Who Helped Expose Him Faces 10-Year Sentence

By Matt Essert January 9, 2014 36


Sometimes justice is not very just. Deric Lostutter, the 26-year-old hacker who went by the online alias, KYAnonymous, is facing charges after an FBI raid on his house in April for what the the agency is claiming is his illegal role in obtaining tweets and Instagram posts related to rape of a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville last year. Meanwhile, one of the two rapists Lostutter helped expose was just released from prison 10 months after being sentenced to one year in prison.

Whether or not Lostutter did any actual hacking is unclear (the social media posts were obtained legally), but the fact that he could be facing more prison time than the rapists themselves is appalling.

Although he initially denied his involvement, Lostutter eventually admitted to being the masked man in a video that threatened action against the players involved in the girl's rape and the school officials involved in the cover up and that included the heinous tweets and Instagram posts he had obtained. The video was posted to the high school football team's website and helped bring national attention to this story. A highly disturbing cellphone video (WARNING: graphic language) of students joking about the victim was also released by Anonymous, but there's no apparent connection to Lostutter.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/78485/steubenville-rapist-released-while-hacker-who-helped-expose-him-faces-10-year-sentence

[Kobi]

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — The husband of a woman stoned to death in Pakistan killed his first wife four years ago, police and relatives said Thursday, a shocking twist both showing how complicated justice can be and how dangerous life is for women in the country.

A mob of family members, including her father and brothers, beat 25-year-old Farzana Parveen to death Tuesday with bricks stolen from a construction site in the eastern city of Lahore as onlookers stood by, authorities said. Initially, many in Pakistan offered their condolences to Parveen's husband, Mohammed Iqbal, after the killing as the family apparently didn't want her to marry him.

But Thursday, Zulfiqar Hameed, deputy inspector general for Punjab police, told The Associated Press that authorities arrested Iqbal for the October 2009 killing of his first wife, Ayesha Bibi. Hameed could not offer details about the slaying, but said the case was withdrawn after a family member forgave him.

Under Pakistani law, those charged with a slaying can see their criminal case dropped if family members of the deceased forgive them or accept so-called "blood money" offerings over the crime.

Reached by the AP at his village near the town of Jaranwala, Iqbal said he could not speak because he was praying at his second wife's grave. He did not respond to other requests for comment after that.

One of Iqbal's five children, Aurang Zeb, said his father killed his mother in 2009 over a dispute. He said his father was arrested but the children later forgave him and the case was withdrawn.

"We don't want to discuss whatever had happened in the past, but I confirm that we had forgiven our father Iqbal," Zeb told the AP, adding that his father was in a state of shock after his second wife's death.

Two of Iqbal's cousins also said he killed his first wife but said he had been forgiven by one of his sons.

Pakistan, home to some 180 million people, is an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, and the majority of its citizens long have been fairly conservative. Arranged marriages are the norm among conservative Pakistanis, and hundreds of women are murdered every year in so-called honor killings carried out by husbands or relatives as a punishment for alleged adultery or other illicit sexual behavior that is perceived to bring shame upon her family.

Activists say "blood money" offerings often mean that crimes against women by their spouses or other family members are ignored.

Pakistan has one of the highest rates of violence against women globally. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a private group, said in a report last month that some 869 women were murdered in honor killings in 2013.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned Farzana Parveen's slaying in a statement Thursday, calling it "intolerable." He called on authorities in Punjab province to find the remaining culprits.

Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, also strongly condemned the slaying, saying she didn't want to call it an honor killing as "there is not the faintest vestige of honor in killing a woman in this way." She called on Pakistan's government to stop the slayings.

"The fact that she was killed on her way to court, shows a serious failure by the state to provide security for someone who — given how common such killings are in Pakistan — was obviously at risk," Pillay said in a statement Wednesday.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Thursday welcomed comments by senior Pakistani leaders condemning "this heinous crime" and hoped the perpetrators would quickly be brought to justice. She said it was at least the third so-called honor killing reported in Pakistan this week.

http://news.yahoo.com/pakistan-slain-womans-husband-killed-1st-wife-184702535.html

___

[LeftWriteFemme]

HPFcspwbrq8&bpctr

[Kobi]

UK leaders condemn Sudanese woman's death sentence

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister David Cameron and former leader Tony Blair have urged Sudan's government to lift the death sentence imposed on a Christian woman who refused to renounce her faith.

Cameron said the treatment of 27-year-old Meriam Ibrahim "is barbaric and has no place in today's world." Blair described the case as a "brutal and sickening distortion of faith."

Cameron told Saturday's edition of The Times newspaper that the British government was pressing Sudan to annul the sentence.

Ibrahim, whose father was Muslim but who was raised by her Christian mother, was convicted of apostasy for marrying a Christian and sentenced to hang.

http://news.yahoo.com/uk-leaders-condemn-sudanese-womans-death-sentence-112441182.html

2 more arrests made in India gang-rape
Attack on teen cousins later hung from tree sparks outrage

Authorities arrested five men -- three brothers and two police officers -- who are facing rape and murder charges, said R.K.S. Rathore, a senior police officer.

The girls were out in the orchard relieving themselves Tuesday night when the attackers grabbed them, authorities said.

Toilets are rare in the village, forcing women to wander away into fields in the dead of night.

The lack of indoor plumbing leaves women in rural areas vulnerable to frequent rapes and beatings.

Read more: http://www.wcvb.com/national/2-more-arrests-made-in-India-gang-rape/26262526#ixzz33IPAypyl

Malaysian Girl Allegedly Raped By 38 Men

KUALA LUMPUR, May 30 (Reuters) - Malaysian police have detained 13 men and are looking for other suspects following allegations that a 15-year-old girl was raped by 38 men in an abandoned hut, media said on Friday.

Astro Awani television and and The Star daily reported that the assault took place in the northern state of Kelantan on May 20 when the girl met a girlfriend and was lured to an empty hut reported to be a local drug haunt.

The men took turns to rape her for hours. Police were also investigating whether her 17-year-old friend was also raped.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/30/malaysia-gang-rape-teen_n_5415397.html

---------------------------------------

This isnt about sexually frustrated nerds without game, gun control, or any other excuses we used to explain male sexual violence against women.

The is about power, privilege, and entitlement of men. It is about using a penis as a weapon of mass destruction against our sisters.

And what are we fixated on? Let's see, does RuPaul has the right credentials to use the T word. Should the LA Clippers be sold to quell the controvery of its racist owner. And, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West taking a honeymoon stroll in Prague

There is something serious scewed up here.

[Kobi]

That's the apparent reality in Mauritania, the country with the world's highest incidence of modern slavery. Located in West Africa, on the edge of the Sahara Desert, an estimated 4% to 20% of people there remain enslaved. It was the last country in the world to abolish the practice -- in 1981. And it only criminalized owning humans in 2007.

Mbeirika Mint M'bareck, a 15-year-old girl, was rescued from slavery only to be subsequently charged with having sex outside of marriage, according to a letter activists drafted on her behalf. (It is unclear who fathered the child). That crime is potentially punishable by death by stoning, according to an expert I spoke with. The activists planned to send the letter to the country's ministry of justice on Monday.

"We are shocked and appalled that the prosecuting authorities would bring the charge of (adultery), as this young girl is evidently the victim of the heinous crime of slavery as well as statutory rape," according to the letter, which the activists provided.

The 15-year-old ex-slave was "heavily pregnant" during a court hearing, which apparently led to the charge of sex outside of marriage. Her alleged captor, meanwhile, was charged simply with "exploitation of a minor (without financial compensation)," as opposed to the charge of slavery, which carries a longer prison term.

The situation is frightening not just for the teenager -- who should be released from judicial control, should have the charges against her dropped and should have her case further investigated -- but for those women who remain in slavery in Mauritania. After all, as Sarah Mathewson, Anti-Slavery International's Africa coordinator, noted in an email to me from nearby Niger, news of this case is bound to deter others being held from trying to escape.

"The majority of women in slavery have children outside of marriage, partly because they are so often raped by their masters, or encouraged into sexual relationships from a young age but denied the right to marry formally," Mathewson wrote. "This charge against a young girl sends a clear message to other women in slavery: If you leave your slave-owner with your children and try to seek justice, not only will we not assist and protect you, we will also charge you for the 'crime' of extramarital sex."

Mauritanian government officials did not immediately respond to e-mail requests for comment on Monday morning. I will update this post if and when I do hear from them. I also have been unable to obtain court documents concerning Mbeirika Mint M'bareck's case, and will provide details if I do get the chance to view them.

Perhaps this case will help wake up the international community to the continued existence of slavery in the modern world. Mauritania has shown some encouraging signs of progress in recent years. Anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, after being imprisoned for burning passages of Koranic texts that he said condone slavery, was released from prison and ran unsuccessfully for president this year. He's won international human rights awards and was featured in a recent New Yorker profile. The government also has created an agency specifically dedicated to trying to end the vestiges of slavery.

"The fact that a girl rescued from a situation of slavery should face this charge is particularly deplorable, given the Mauritanian government's recent commitments ... to strengthen the legal and policy framework against the vestiges of slavery and to increase support for victims," says a letter to the Mauritanian minister of justice on Mbeirika Mint M'bareck's behalf, signed by international organizations such as Walk Free, Anti-Slavery International and Free the Slaves, as well as Mauritanian groups.

Mbeirika Mint M'bareck's case is a sad reminder that progress to date is far from enough. Her case also is a chance for Mauritania to show the world that it's listening. By releasing her from judicial custody and dropping any charges against her, the justice ministry could send an important message: That it's finally getting serious about providing justice and eradicating slavery.

[Update, posted on October 23 at 10 a.m. ET]

Charges against Mbeirika Mint M'bareck have been dropped and the young woman is now living free from judicial custody, according to her attorney. It's unclear exactly why the charges were abandoned. The attorney, El Id Mohameden M'bareck, said the charges likely were dropped before anti-slavery activists on Monday sent a letter to authorities urging the 15-year-old liberated slave not be prosecuted for having sex outside marriage. The attorney welcomed the news, but said it remains important that the girl's former master be charged with the crime of slavery, instead of a lesser offense, as he says is currently the case.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/20/opinion/sutter-mauritania-slave-charged/index.html?sr=sharebar_facebook

[*Anya*]

Wed Mar 11, 2015 7:37am GMT

By Katy Migiro

NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Somali families living in Britain and the United States are bringing their daughters to Kenya to secretly undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) as their home countries crack down on the internationally condemned practice.

Families pay up to $300 for a girl's genitals to be cut, said circumcisers and an anti-FGM campaigner in Nairobi's Eastleigh district, nicknamed Little Mogadishu as it is home to refugees from neighbouring war-torn Somalia and ethnic Somali Kenyans.

"Somalis come from America and Europe," said one elderly circumciser, wearing a purple and white tie-dye headscarf.

"They always come to me because they are scared to do it there ... During the holidays, they come and I cut them."

The circumciser, who learned the trade as a teenager in northern Kenya, declined to give her name as Kenya has stepped up prosecutions for FGM.

>>>>> The ritual, which involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia, can cause haemorrhage, shock, childbirth complications, fistula and death.

Under Kenya's 2011 law, those practising FGM face a minimum of three years in jail or a fine, and life imprisonment if the girl dies. Some 50 cases are in court, with at least two people facing murder charges.

Christmas is the cutting season in Kenya as schools close for six weeks. The government's FGM prosecution unit took out newspaper adverts in November warning that it was monitoring communities that practise FGM.

>>>> Around 27 percent of Kenyan women and girls have been cut.

>>>> In Somalia the practice is almost universal.

>>>> Cutters in Kenya are changing their methods in an attempt to evade the law, switching from infibulation -- in which all external genitalia are removed and the vaginal opening stitched closed -- to sunna, where only the clitoris is cut or removed.

"I just cut a little," said the circumciser, gesticulating with hennaed fingernails. "Sunna is good. She still enjoys sex. If you cut it all, she suffers."

FGM is deeply entrenched among Somalis, most of whom believe it is a religious obligation for Muslims. Campaigners say there is nothing in the Koran that advocates FGM.

Circumcisers learn to perform FGM while training with elder women to become traditional birth attendants. Around half of women in Kenya deliver at home and rely on lay midwives.

'THE MODERN WAY'

An anti-FGM campaigner in Eastleigh said she met a Somali-American from Minnesota in December who came to Nairobi for two weeks to have her daughters, aged 12 and 13, cut.

"The mother feels like she is doing the right thing," the campaigner said. "She says they are not going to undergo pain because they are doing it the modern way."

The United States banned FGM in 1996 and has since made it illegal to take a girl abroad to be cut.

British Somalis are often wealthier and call circumcisers to perform FGM in their rented homes in more upmarket parts of Nairobi like Hurlingham, the campaigner said.

An estimated 65,000 girls in Britain are at risk of FGM which was outlawed in 1985. Since 2003 it has also been illegal to take a girl abroad for FGM.

Border Force officers have stepped up education and surveillance of airline passengers flying to and from FGM-practising countries, such as Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

Most of the Somalis who come to Kenya to perform FGM lived in Nairobi before, often as refugees, the circumciser said.

In December, she cut a 7-year-old British girl whose elder sisters she had cut in Nairobi several years earlier when the family was living there. Others get her number from former clients in the Somali diaspora.

Leyla Hussein, co-founder of British anti-FGM group Daughters of Eve, said campaigners in Kenya had told her that the diaspora communities were helping keep cutters in business.

"I know loads of women who have been cut in Kenya," added Hussein, a psychotherapist who helps women with FGM.

Hussein, who was born in Somalia, said campaigners in Kenya had helped get cutters closed down only to see them reappear in "pop-up houses" during the school holidays when families from the diaspora arrive and pay double the money.

"They told me that when the diasporas come they will usually have a group of girls together so it's a lot of money and the cutters are not going to miss out."

The head of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, visited Kenya in October to launch a global campaign to end FGM in one generation.

Worldwide more than 130 million girls and women have undergone FGM in 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East, according to U.N. data.

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKBN0M70L020150311?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

[Kobi]

UNITED NATIONS — The evidence is ubiquitous. The gang rape of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi sets off an unusual burst of national outrage in India. In South Sudan, women are assaulted by both sides in the civil war. In Iraq, jihadists enslave women for sex. And American colleges face mounting scrutiny about campus rape.

Despite the gains women have made in education, health and even political power in the course of a generation, violence against women and girls worldwide “persists at alarmingly high levels,” according to a United Nations analysis that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon presented to the General Assembly on Monday.

About 35 percent of women worldwide — more than one in three — said they had experienced physical violence in their lifetime, the report finds. One in 10 girls under the age of 18 was forced to have sex, it says.

The subject is under sharp focus as delegates from around the world gather here starting on Monday to assess how well governments have done since they promised to ensure women’s equality at a landmark conference in Beijing 20 years ago — and what to do next.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, who attended the Beijing conference in 1995, is scheduled to speak on Tuesday.

Since the Beijing conference, there has been measurable, though mixed, progress on many fronts, according to the United Nations analysis.

As many girls as boys are now enrolled in primary school, a sharp advance since 1995. Maternal mortality rates have fallen by half. And women are more likely to be in the labor force, though the pay gap is closing so slowly that it will take another 75 years before women and men are paid equally for equal work.

The share of women serving in legislatures has nearly doubled, too, though women still account for only one in five legislators. All but 32 countries have adopted laws that guarantee gender equality in their constitutions.

But violence against women — including rape, murder and sexual harassment — remains stubbornly high in countries rich and poor, at war and at peace. The United Nations’ main health agency, the World Health Organization, found that 38 percent of women who are murdered are killed by their partners.

Little was even known 20 years ago about the extent of such violence, a measure of the lack of focus on the issue.

“At the time of the Beijing conference there was a desperate call for more information,” said Mary Ellsberg, director of the Global Women’s Institute at George Washington University. Now, she said: “We have data from most of the countries in the world. That, in and of itself, is a huge accomplishment. The issue is, it’s very hard to collect this data.”

Even as women’s groups continue to push for laws that criminalize violence — marital rape is still permitted in many countries — new types of attacks have emerged, some of them online, including rape threats on Twitter.

Where there are laws on the books — 125 countries criminalize domestic violence today, up from 89 in 2006, according to Equality Now, which tracks laws that affect women’s rights — they are not reliably enforced.

The economic impact is huge. One recent study found that domestic violence against women and children alone costs the global economy $4 trillion.

“Overall, as you look at the world, there have been no large victories in eradicating violence against women,” said Valerie M. Hudson, a professor of international affairs at Texas A & M University who has developed world maps that chart the status of women.

In some cases, the laws on the books are the problem, women’s rights advocates say. In some countries, like Nigeria, the law permits a man to beat his wife under certain circumstances. But even when laws are technically adequate, victims often do not feel comfortable going to law enforcement, or they are unable to pay the bribes required to file a police report.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of the United Nations agency for gender equity and women’s empowerment — known as UN Women — said that for the laws to mean anything, governments around the world have to persuade their police officers, judges and medical personnel to take violence against women seriously.

“I am disappointed, I have to be honest,” she said about the stubborn hold of violence against women. “More than asking for more laws to be passed, I’m asking for implementation.”

Yasmeen Hassan, the executive director of Equality Now, said governments needed to be reminded that they committed to making their laws fair for women. Cultural differences cannot be an excuse, she said. “It’s always a cop-out for governments to not do what they signed up to do,” she said.

The new round of global development targets that governments around the world will have to agree to later this year, known as Sustainable Development Goals, includes a separate requirement for women’s equal rights, including how they protect their female citizens from violence.

The latest United Nations report draws attention to the rise of “extremism and conservatism,” and without naming any countries or groups, it argues that what they share is a “resistance to women’s human rights.” The assaults and abductions by the Islamic State have brought new urgency to the issue.

Dr. Hudson, the academic, said the persistence of violence in so many forms is in part because it can establish domination against women of all kinds, for a broad range of personal and political purposes. A husband can just as easily beat his wife if she is a high school dropout or a college graduate. An entire territory can be claimed if fighters rape the local women — or take them as sex slaves, as is the case of the Islamic State.

“I think violence against women is so darn useful,” she said. “That’s why it’ll be so hard to eradicate.”

Violence can start before birth. Sex-selective abortions have been reduced in some countries, as in South Korea, but are higher than ever in other places, like India, and are going up sharply in places like Armenia.

Harassment is commonplace. In the United States, 83 percent of girls aged 12 to 16 said they had experienced some form of harassment in public schools. In New Delhi, a 2010 study found that two out of three women said they were harassed more than twice in the last year alone.

Violence against women is often unreported. For instance, a study conducted in the 28 countries of the European Union found that only 14 percent of women reported their most serious episode of domestic violence to the police.

“Violence against women has epidemic proportions, and is present in every single country around the world,” said Lydia Alpizar, executive director of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, a global feminist group. “Yet it is still not a real priority for most governments.”

At Monday’s gathering, member governments adopted a nonbinding declaration vowing to abide by the promises made at the 1995 Beijing conference, which included language on reproductive rights, and pledged to work for women’s equal rights by 2030. Women’s groups called it “bland” and said much more needed to be done.

Perhaps the biggest change in 20 years, say those who attended the Beijing conference, is that the subject is now front and center in public discussion.

“There is actually a great deal more attention being paid today to violence against women,” said Charlotte Bunch, a feminist scholar who attended the Beijing conference. “The truth is, it’s a complex issue that isn’t solved easily.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/world/un-finds-alarmingly-high-levels-of-violence-against-women.html?_r=0

[Kobi]

In Dadun village, in China’s southern Hainan province, some residents are more equal than others: the men.

When inhabitants were told to make way for a tourism development, they learned that only men would receive compensation. Now, 92 angry female residents are suing the village committee.

“The money used to build these new houses comes from selling our old homes. Everyone should get fair compensation,” said Xu Jinyi, 24, one of the plaintiffs.

The deliberate discrimination in Dadun is particularly glaring. But it highlights the property gap in the world’s second largest economy.

China’s women have a high rate of economic participation. But not only do their incomes lag behind those of men; women also lose out when it comes to wealth.

“Women in China have missed out on the greatest accumulation of residential property wealth in history,” said Leta Hong Fincher, author of Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. “That tremendous accumulation is now over. Even if every single woman in China suddenly acquired the ability to buy a home in her own name, it would still be too late to catch up.”

Women are actually worse off than five years ago, thanks to judicial guidance in 2011 that property should no longer be split on divorce, but awarded to the person whose name is on the deeds.

The decision is a backward step for women. It looks like a fair division, but in most cases, men provide the house and women provide the money for decoration and furniture,” said Li Ying, a Beijing-based lawyer focused on gender issues. In China, properties are usually sold as shells, and decorating can cost almost as much as the initial purchase.

The norm is that the man buys the property when a couple sets up home. But most men need family help to do so, said Fincher, and their wife’s contribution is often vital. Research in China’s biggest real-estate markets in 2012 found that in 70% of cases brides or their families at least partially financed properties, but women were named on only 30% of deeds.

Fincher said in-laws often insist the bride’s name is left off on the grounds she has paid a smaller share. In a society where the pressure to wed is intense, many women – often at the urging of parents – think it is better to marry even if financial arrangements seem unfair.

Rural women fare particularly badly because they also lose out on rights to use land, despite accounting for more than 65% of the rural labour force.

Such rights are assigned to households, with no clear definition of the rights of individual members. If family circumstances change, the village committee or the head of the household usually decides what to do.

“For widows it depends on their relationship with their husband’s family. Sometimes they are treated very well. Divorced women have a very hard time,” said Wang Xiaobei, an expert on gender issues at Landesa, which works on land issues globally.
A textile worker in Huaibei, Anhui province. It is not uncommon for divorced women to lose everything and go to the cities to find work.
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A textile worker in Huaibei, Anhui province. It is not uncommon for divorced women to lose everything and go to the cities to find work. Photograph: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

The tradition is for women to marry into their husband’s families, with the land they have previously farmed often going to their brothers or their brothers’ wives. Should they get divorced, they usually have to leave their new village. Research by a court in one county in Henan province found fewer than 10% of women in rural divorce cases even requested the division of land rights.

Yet if they return to their birth village, they may not have any land there either. Many are forced into low-paid jobs in the cities.

The All-China Women’s Federation, the official group representing women, has backed Landesa’s proposal that as a first step all household members should be named on land rights certificates and that wives should be named alongside husbands as the household’s representatives.

The discrimination in the Dadun case is extreme, but Li said the only unusual aspect of it was that a court had agreed to take the women’s case.

“The problem doesn’t just exist in Hainan. It’s national. There are many laws protecting the rights of women – the problem is traditions and customs,” she said.

The head of the village committee – who said he had no time to talk when contacted by the Guardian – has said the decision was legal because the committee approved it. But the voting process does not allow it to override female villagers’ legal rights. “The law of our country clearly states that all people should have equal rights regardless of their sex or age,” said Hu Qifang, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs.

He noted that like most committees, Dadun’s is stacked with men: only three or four women were among the dozens who voted.

The scheme allocates houses according to how many men are in the family’s youngest generation. A family with three sons gains three houses; a family with three daughters only one, for the father. In essence, women are expected to count on the dutifulness or chivalry of male relatives.

“We fear what will happen to us in future,” said Wu Yanjiao, 20. “Girls might not have a place to live if they don’t get on well with their brothers. Also, what would happen if I were to marry to someone from outside the village and later divorce? I would have nowhere to go.”

Villagers report growing discord within families, as brothers and sisters quarrel over the scheme, and are disturbed by the message it sends as well as its immediate unfairness. Li Qingquan, 50, said villagers were markedly more hostile to women.

“I‘ve heard people openly saying that girls are useless to their families because they didn’t get houses,” he said.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/24/chinese-women-equality-laws-land-housing

[Kobi]

Iran is seeking to reverse progressive laws on family planning by outlawing voluntary sterilisation and restricting access to contraceptives, in a move human rights groups say would set Iranian women back decades and reduce them to “baby-making machines”.

The Iranian parliament is considering two separate bills aimed at boosting the population. But Amnesty International warned in a report published on Wednesday that the proposals are misguided and, if approved, would “entrench discriminatory practices” and expose women to health risks.

Iran has pursued an effective birth control programme for over two decades. It included subsidised vasectomies, free condoms and affordable contraceptives, as well as countrywide education on sexual health and family planning.

The new legislation would effectively put an end to the country’s famous slogan “two children is enough”. The U-turn has come after the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, slammed family planning as an imitation of western lifestyle and asked Iran’s population to be doubled. Given his support, the bills are likely to be approved.

Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and north Africa, Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, said: “The authorities are promoting a dangerous culture in which women are stripped of key rights and viewed as baby-making machines rather than human beings with fundamental rights to make choices about their own bodies and lives..

“The bills reinforce discriminatory stereotypes of women and mark an unprecedented move by the state to interfere in people’s personal lives,” she continued. “In their zealous quest to project an image of military might and geopolitical strength by attempting to increase birth rates, Iran’s authorities are trampling all over the fundamental rights of women – even the marital bed is not out of bounds.”

Last year, Khamenei said that Iran would face an ageing population in the not-too-distant future if couples refuse to have more children. Critics say his concerns are unfounded as about 70% of the country’s 77 million people are under the age of 35.

“Why do some [couples] prefer to have one … or two children? Why do men or women avoid having children through different means?” Khamenei asked in October. “The reasons need to be studied. We are not a country of 75 million, we have [the capacity] to become at least 150 million people, if not more.”

The bill to increase fertility rates and prevent population decline will ban all surgeries intended for permanent contraception, except in cases in which there are threats to physical health. Harsh punishments are designed for doctors involved in such surgeries. The legislation will also slash state funding for birth control programmes which provided subsidies for modern contraceptives.

Amnesty warned this would increase the number of unwanted pregnancies and force women to seek illegal abortions. It would also lead to a spike in sexually transmitted infections, such as HIV, the organisation warned.

The second proposed legislation, the comprehensive population and exaltation of family bill, “instructs all private and public entities to prioritise, in sequence, men with children, married men without children and married women with children when hiring for certain jobs,” Amnesty said. The bill will also tighten the divorce laws, which are already heavily in favour of men.

Hadj Sahraoui said the bill would have “devastating consequences for women trapped in abusive relationships”. She added: “The bills send a message that women are good for nothing more than being obedient housewives and creating babies, and suggests they do not have the right to work or pursue a career until they have fulfilled that primary role and duty.”

Amnesty said the proposals are also in stark contrast with promises by President Hassan Rouhani for gender equality and warned they would add to “the catalogue of discriminations” against women.

Iran has an active female population. Until recently most university graduates were women and many, especially in bigger cities, work alongside men. Although women can vote and drive, discriminatory laws are persistent. Women are required to wear mandatory hijab and, in courts, their testimony is worth only half that of a man. They also face inequality with regard to inheritance rights.

“The age of criminal responsibility for girls is just under nine years old but just under 15 years for a boy,” said Amnesty. “Rape within marriage and domestic violence are not recognised as criminal offences. Engaging in lesbian sex is punishable by 100 lashes with a fourth conviction resulting in the death penalty.”

According to official figures for 2013-2014, 41,226 girls were subject to early or forced marriages while between the ages of 10 and 14. At least 201 girls had married while under the age of 10.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/11/iran-ban-voluntary-sterilisation-contraceptive-access-block-boost-population?CMP=share_btn_fb