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18/3/2013
International: The Ethics of Alliance and Solidarity: An Exchange Between Rafia Zakaria and Meredith Tax

The following is an exchange based on a recent Dissent article by Meredith Tax. To take part in the debate, you can visit Dissent’s Facebook page. In her essay “An Expedient Alliance? The Muslim Right and The Anglo-American Left,” noted feminist Meredith Tax makes a number of accusations. Most of them center on the Left’s “support of the Muslim Right,” which has in Tax’s view “undermined struggles for secular democracy in the Global South.” Tax argues that “left-wing alliances with fundamentalist groups” amount to a betrayal “of the majority of their co-religionists, who do not wish to be represented by extremists.”

18/3/2013
Egypt: The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights holds the state of Egypt accountable for neglecting to protect women from violence!

The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights has handed down a decision in a case concerning violence against four women journalists during a protest. The Commission found that the state of Egypt failed to protect four women journalists from violence and in doing so violated their human rights including rights to equality and non-discrimination, right to dignity and protection from cruel inhuman and degrading treatment and their right to express and disseminate opinions within the law.

14/3/2013
Egypt: Statement by the Muslim Brotherhood about The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

In the name of God the Merciful

Statement of the Muslim Brotherhood about The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which violates all principles of the Islamic Sharia and the Islamic community.

13/3/2013
UN: 140 Million Girls Will Become Child Brides by 2020 at Current Rates

The UN Commission on Status of Women, Session 57, debated inclusion of child marriage in agreement on eliminating violence against women, as Malawi seeks to raise its legal age of marriage from 15 to 18. More than 140 million girls will become child brides by 2020 if current rates of early marriage continue, according to the UN.

13/3/2013
UN: Who should care about stoning?

Today sees the launch of a new Global Campaign to Stop Stoning. Rochelle Terman examines the history of this gendered practice of violence against women. With stoning, as with all forms of culturally-justified violence against women, it is very difficult to see where culture ends and politics begin.

12/3/2013
UN: Unholy Alliance

Some horrific events over the past few months, including the shooting of a Pakistani schoolgirl and the rape and murder of a young Indian physiotherapy student, should have been an alert for the world to unite in preventing violence against women.

12/3/2013
Pakistan: Statement issued by the Women Action Forum (WAF), Karachi, following the attack on Shia residents of Abbas Colony

Once again we share unspeakable horror at the carnage against citizens, this time in AbbasTown, Karachi. Once again we express our condemnation and outrage. Once again we wonder how many more times we will do this before there is resolve to deal with religious militancy.

4/3/2013
Zimbabwe: In Ground-breaking Move, South Africa Steps in over alleged Zimbabwe Mass Rapes

In a ground-breaking move, South African prosecutors will investigate President Robert Mugabe’s political party for crimes against humanity for an alleged campaign of mass rapes in Zimbabwe’s last election.

The decision, following a request by Canadian activist Stephen Lewis and others, marks the first time an African government has used domestic laws to investigate another African country under the emerging doctrine of “universal jurisdiction.”

1/3/2013
Maldives: Girl to get 100 Lashes for Pre-marital Sex!

A 15-year-old rape victim has been sentenced to 100 lashes for engaging in premarital sex, court officials said. The charges against the girl were brought against her last year after police investigated accusations that her stepfather had raped her and killed their baby. He is still to face trial.

21/2/2013
Mali: Malian Women Raped, Stoned, Lashed and Forced to Marry amid Intense Fighting

When armed Islamist fighters arrived in the northeastern Malian village of Haribomo near Timbuktu, one of the first things they did was sip sweet tea with the local imam. They then told him how they expected the village women to behave.

“The Islamists met with the imam and they said, ‘Let us tell you our rules’,” said Adane Djiffiey Djallo, a coordinator at Aide et Developpement au Mali, a Timbuktu-based non-governmental organisation. “They said women would no longer be allowed to go to work, to the market or wash in the river.”But the imam turned to the Islamists and said: “‘Let me tell you my rules’”.