Migration Category: Global Old Site

Late this week, a couple accused of obtaining an illegal abortion in Queensland, Australia, was found not guilty by a District Court jury. According to ABC News, it took the jury under an hour to reach the unanimous verdict. Following the reading of the verdict, applause and cheering broke out in the court’s public gallery.

It has been almost 2 years since Tegan Leach took RU486, a drug used to induce an abortion, that had been sent from the Ukraine to her boyfriend, Sergie Brennan according to Feministing. Leach and Brennan, who were facing up to seven and three years in prison respectively, were the first people in 24 years to be tried for obtaining an abortion in Queensland. The law they were accused of breaking has been on the books since 1899.

Kate Marsh from the group Children by Choice told ABC, “they’ve been through a whole lot over the last 18 months and it’s not something they ever should have had to go through in the first place.” She added, hopefully this decision “gives the Government a bit of impetus for reform.”

In its recently released Global Gender Index Study, the World Economic Forum ranked Nordic countries -Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden – the highest for gender equality. The index evaluates the countries based on such factors as women’s access to education, the presence of women in politics, equal employment opportunities and salaries, and health, reported Bloomberg.

Of the 134 countries studied, 59 percent narrowed the equality gap between men and women, according to Bloomberg. The US’s rank has improved considerably over the past year, mostly due to the greater presence of women in the Obama administration and the reduction of wage differences, the New York Times reports.

The head of the Forum’s Women Leaders and Gender Parity program, Saadia Zahidi told CNN, “it’s very encouraging that more countries are becoming aware of why it’s important to reduce the gender gap and are starting to explore policies that may be needed.” She also noted that gender equality fosters national economic growth and prosperity.

Gender inequality is greatest in Yemen, Chad, and Pakistan, according to the New York Times. The study also found that France faced a decrease in gender equality, due to the decline in the numbers of women holding government leadership positions.

Last week, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a watered down version of a resolution that originally called for restrictions on European doctors’ right to withhold referral information from patients seeking abortions. According to a Center for Reproductive Rights press release, the version of the resolution that was approved includes anti-abortion amendments that severely limit its provisions.

The Daily Mail reports that the original resolution would have required all doctors who do not provide abortions to directly refer women to a specific abortion provider. The non-binding resolution also would have encouraged doctors, regardless of their objections, to provide patients with abortions when requested in emergency situations and cases where there is no “equivalent practitioner within a reasonable distance,” reported the Daily Mail. Though the resolution is non-binding, the Council could have used its original language to pressure European governments to enforce and improve their conscientious objection laws.

Currently, European conscientious objection guidelines allow doctors to inform patients of their right to seek an abortion elsewhere without providing women with substantive information about where to find such services. The Center for Reproductive Rights states that numerous European countries legally require doctors to refer their patients to another healthcare provider, but there is no evidence as to whether the laws are obeyed. According to the Daily Mail, an estimated 86 percent of doctors refuse to perform abortions in the Lazio region of Italy, an area which includes Rome. The originally proposed resolution required that doctors who object to providing abortions register as objectors and recommended establishing a patient complaint system.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe had also passed a resolution two years ago that recommended unrestricted access to abortions in its member states.

Last week, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued separate rulings that the Mexican government must pay damages to two indigenous women who were raped by military soldiers in 2002. The court stated that Mexico failed to uphold “the rights to personal integrity, dignity and legal protection of Ines Fernandez and Valentina Rosendo,” according to the Latin America News Dispatch.

The Associated Press reported that Rosendo was 17 years old when she was raped. At the time of the incident, Rosendo was approached by eight soldiers, who asked her if she had seen a masked suspect. Rosendo, unsure of the suspect’s whereabouts, was beaten and raped by the soldiers. A month later, 11 soldiers approached Fernandez at her house. Faced with a language barrier, Fernandez was unable to answer their questions and was subsequently raped.

The women, both from the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, will each be compensated with judgments upwards of $100,000. Rosendo told the Associated Press, “If the government has a little bit of dignity, it should accept they were mistaken so I can go on with my life…They didn’t want to hear me in my own country.” Additionally, the court ordered Mexico to take public action to acknowledge its international responsibility to victims of sexual violence and modernize their legislation so that violations of human rights will not fall under military jurisdiction in investigations, according to the Latin American Herald Tribune.

Prominent jailed Iranian human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, confirmed in a short telephone conversation with her husband, that she is on the twelfth day of a hunger strike.

Sotoudeh, who defended many political activists and campaigners in Iran’s presidential elections last year, has been held in Tehran’s Evin Prison since September 4, 2010, after police forces allegedly attacked her house and arrested her in front of her husband and children charges of “acting against state security” and “propaganda against the Islamic Republic,” according to Amnesty International.

Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi and a group of human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, and others, have called for the immediate and unconditional release of Sotoudeh in a joint statement last week. Ebadi has also expressed deep concern about Sotoudeh’s health during the hunger strike, according to the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

France’s Constitutional Council endorsed a law that bans burqas and the niqab, full body and face coverings, in public spaces. This was the last legal obstacle before this law could go into effect, reports CNN. The Council has however added an amendment to this law stating that it will not apply to places of worship, based on the French Constitution, which protects the free expression of religion, according to Liberation.

The original legislation came from a panel of French lawmakers who recommended a ban last year, and passed a non-binding resolution in May calling the full-face veil contrary to the laws of the nation. When enacted, the law will impose a fine of approximately $190 and/or a citizenship course for women wearing a niqab or a burqa. Additionally, any person forcing a woman to wear a full-face veil will face a year in prison or a $19,000 fine.

Given the reaction of Islamic fundamentalist websites stating that this ruling is an attack not just on burqas, but on Islam itself, many fear the repercussions of this law, according to the Independent.

Self-proclaimed Lieutenant Colonel Mayele was arrested by the United Nations (UN) mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for his leadership of an armed group that allegedly raped up to 500 people in late July. Mayele was taken into custody yesterday in a military operation carried out by the Congolese military and the UN Mission for the Stabilization of the DR Congo.

The arrest was welcomed by UN Special Representative Margot Wallstrom, the top UN official dealing with sexual violence and armed conflict,reports United Nations Radio. Wallstrom arrived in the DRC last Tuesday to investigate the mass rape of civilians that occurred in late July and early August of this year. While in the DRC, Ms. Wallstrom has met with UN agencies and Congolese officials to develop a a strategy to reduce sexual violence.

Al Jazeera reports that the use of rape by groups of fighters in eastern Congo to intimidate and control the population has been increasing, especially in the mining areas. Wallstrom told Al Jazeera that Mayele’s arrest “should send out a signal that sexual violence will not go unpunished.”

Last week, the US Department of State released a statement condemning the alleged stoning of a woman by members of the Taliban in northwest Pakistan. “The vicious attack…violates all terms of human decency and is a chilling example of the cowardly disregard violent extremists have for human life,” US Department of State spokesman Philip J. Crowley said in a State Department press release. He continued, “there is no justification for such barbaric and cruel treatment of a human being.”

A video of the stoning, which appears to have taken place in Orakzai, Pakistan, has been widely circulated on the internet. According to Reuters, the graphic footage shows a hooded woman stretched across the ground as a group of men throw large rocks at her until she dies. The video was released by Al Aan, a television channel based in Dubai, which focuses on Arab women’s issues. Al Aan reports that the woman was stoned because she had been seen with a man.

The authenticity and date of the video have not been verified, though Gayle Lemmon, deputy director of the Council of Foreign Relations’ Women and Foreign Policy Program, told ABC News that “it is consistent with videos that have been coming from Taliban-controlled areas since the ’90s.” A similar video was released last year, depicting Pakistani Islamists flogging a teenage girl because she allegedly had an affair. As part of a number of suicide bombing campaigns, Taliban insurgents have bombed hundreds of schools for girls in the area.

Yesterday, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) published their 2010 report about the current education situation for girls in Iraq. The report PDF analyzes the education system in Iraq and makes recommendations to both the Iraqi government and UNICEF Iraq to improve girls’ access to high quality instruction.

The overall number of children receiving primary education in Iraq has been declining since the 2004-05 school year, although girls’ enrollment in schools is much lower than that of boys and their drop out rate is higher. According to the study, “for every 100 boys enrolled in primary schools in Iraq, there are just under 89 girls.”

The report attributes girls’ under representation in schools to the lack of family approval of girls’ education, difficulties traveling to and from school, early marriages, and unsafe conditions and abuse at the school. To address these issues, UNICEF recommends improving school curriculum, providing safe transportation to the girls, implementing innovative educational strategies, and improving teacher training.

United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Margot Wallstroem arrived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Tuesday to investigate the mass rape of civilians that occurred there in June and July of this year. The UN News Center reports the objective is to coordinate an appropriate response to the mass rape by rebels of more than 300 people, mostly women, in the country’s North Kivu province.

The United Nations first condemned the use of mass rape as a weapon of war in August. At that time, Wallstroem told reporters that using rape as a tool of war is no more acceptable nor inevitable than committing mass murder. Rebels allegedly entered the town of Ruvungi on July 30 and proceeded to pillage the town and systematically rape its occupants for several days, blocking a road that connects the town to UN peacekeeping troops.

“The FDLR is once again responsible for grave human rights violations in the DRC,” Ms. Wallstroem said Monday in Geneva at a UN Human Rights Council meeting. “The establishment of responsibilities must begin with the leaders of this group and with those of other groups for not having prevented these outrages.”

While in the DRC, Ms. Wallstroem intends to meet with UN agencies and Congolese officials to speed up the enactment of an effective strategy against sexual violence.

Former Vice President and current chief of staff to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaie has called for instituting more rights for women in Iran. Rahim-Mashaie has been under relentless criticism from the extreme right since Ahmadinejad’s re-election last year, reports Reuters.

“Today women play an important role in our society and the current situation of our society is not comparable to the past centuries and decades,” Rahim-Mashaie reportedly told Iranian newspapers on Wednesday. “We should try to guarantee women’s rights where our religious framework allows us. The legislative system should act in a way to take the rights of women into consideration more than ever,” according to Reuters.

Last year Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei forced President Ahmadinejad to dismiss Rahim-Mashaie from his job as First Vice President following outrage from conservatives at his suggestion that Iran was a friend to all nations. Ahmadinejad then appointed Rahim-Mashaie to Chief of Staff and then several other positions, including Middle East Policy Adviser.

Rahim-Mashaie’s comments were made as Iran’s parliament debates a law, which could give a man the right to take up to three other wives without the consent of his existing spouse. Current law requires that consent be given by the first wife.

Today, the first class of women officers in decades graduated from a class of new recruits in the Afghanistan National Army (ANA). The NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan states the ANA Female Officers Candidate School, which opened in April, was a joint effort between NATO and the Afghan Ministry of Defense. In total, 29 women graduated.

Requirements for admittance to the program are completion of high school, literacy, and satisfactory achievement on a series of tests. Currently, approximately seventy percent of the Afghan population can neither read nor write. The Washington Post reports that recruiting is now underway for a second Afghan Female Officers Candidate School class. They aim to enroll 150 to start in November.

This class of women officers will not be sent to the front lines in the current war in Afghanistan, which is raging at its strongest since the start of the insurgency in 2001, but will instead largely be doing administrative work as finance and logistics officers. The women hope to help take a lead role in helping move national security foreign forces to national forces by 2014, according to Reuters.

News reports indicate that at least 15 people died during election-related violence in Afghanistan on Saturday, where parliamentary elections were held. The Governor of Kandahar Province narrowly escaped a roadside bomb attack while traveling between polling locations, reported the Los Angeles Times. Throughout the country, dozens of rocket attacks targeted the polls. Turn-out was relatively low, as expected. More than 1,000 of nearly 7,000 polling centers did not open on Saturday due to an inability to ensure safety at the locations.

A record number of women ran for Parliament in this election. In total, approximately 385 of about 2,500 candidates, who ran for the 249 seats in the lower house were women. Sixty-five of the lower house seats are reserved for women. One woman candidate, former Olympic Athlete Robina Jalali, told the Express UK that “of course we are worried about losing our freedoms but if the Taliban accept the constitution, if they let women work and play sport and go to school and go to university, then we won’t have any problems with them.” She continued, “I was a champion athlete for 10 years but I am far more nervous about this than about my races. People must go out and vote to make sure that we get a true and representative result and that the country gets a chance to heal and to grow.”

The Free and Fair Election Foundation, which monitors Afghan elections, said in a statement that “Though there were numerous attacks, none were severe enough to disrupt voting on a wide scale,” reported the Los Angeles Times.

Taliban violence towards candidates and campaign workers has been lethal in recent months. Five campaign workers who had been working for a woman parliament candidate were killed in Afghanistan’s Herat province in August. The workers had been campaigning for incumbent Fauzia Galani, who is one of the few women candidates in the upcoming September elections. Other recent incidents include the murders of at least four candidates.

In last year’s presidential elections, women were unable to vote in some parts of Afghanistan and women’s voting cards were used to stuff ballot boxes in some polling locations. There is also preliminary evidence of voter fraud in Saturday’s election.

Saturday, Afghanistan will hold their second parliamentary elections since the Taliban lost power. Low turn-out is expected as Taliban violence towards candidates and campaign workers has been lethal in recent months. The Taliban have also reportedly made repeated threats to attack during the election. According to Reuters, the Independent Election Commission has reported that 1,019 of 6,835 polling centers will not open on Saturday due to an inability to ensure safety at the locations.

Staffan de Mistura, chief United Nations envoy in Afghanistan, told the Wall Street Journal, “As far as security is concerned, we’re finding ourselves in the worst period of 2010, and in the worst period of the recent years. It’s the worst possible moment and the worst possible country in which to organize an election.”

Five campaign workers who had been working for a woman parliament candidate were killed in Afghanistan’s Herat province in August. The workers had been campaigning for incumbent Fauzia Galani, who is one of the few women candidates in the upcoming September elections. Other recent incidents include the murders of at least four candidates.

In total, there are about 2,500 candidates, 385 of whom are women, running for the 249 seats in the lower house. Sixty-five of the seats are reserved for women. In last year’s presidential elections, women were unable to vote in some parts of Afghanistan and women’s voting cards were used to stuff ballot boxes in some polling locations. In some areas that are not controlled by the Taliban, women accounted for nearly 60 percent of voters. Women’s participation last year was particularly low in Taliban controlled southern regions and in places where segregated women-only polling places did not open due to lack of staff.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced in a report yesterday that although maternal mortality rates have decreased by 34 percent since 1990, the decline in the rate of pregnancy-related deaths is not on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal target for 2015. The report, which was published in conjunction with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the World Bank, stated a need for greater investment in health systems and care quality. Currently, there are approximately 1,000 maternal deaths per day caused by easily preventable conditions that include severe bleeding after childbirth, infections, hypertensive disorders, and unsafe abortion. According to Reuters, the 34 percent decline since 1990 is a result of improved midwife training, family planning services, and increased access in some locales to hospital and clinical care for pregnant women.

The UN Millennium Development Goal target aims to reduce the number of maternal deaths by 75 percent between 1990 and 2015. However, the current rate of decline for the maternal mortality ratio is only 2.3 percent annually, according to a WHO press release. In order to meet the 2015 goal, the annual rate of decline must be increased to 5.5 percent. UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid said, “The lack of maternal health care violates women’s rights to life, health, equality, and non-discrimination,” according to the press release. “We urgently need to address the shortage of health workers and step up funding for reproductive health services.”

The WHO report indicates that 99 percent of the 358,000 maternal deaths in 2008 took place in developing areas, where women are 36 times more likely to die from childbirth or related complications than women in developed countries. The Sub-Saharan Africa region alone accounted for 57 percent of these deaths, despite a 26 percent reduction in its maternal mortality rate since 1990. Only five percent of the deaths occurred in developed countries.

In a nearly unanimous vote yesterday, the French senate approved a law banning any veils that cover the face, making France the first European country to pass such a measure. The ban pertains to the burqa, a full-body covering that includes mesh over the face, and the niqab, a full-face veil that leaves an opening only for the eyes, reports CNN.

The law, which was overwhelmingly approved by France’s lower parliament in July, passed by a vote of 246 to 1 and will go into effect next spring.

The original legislation came from a panel of French lawmakers who recommended a ban last year, and passed a non-binding resolution in May calling the full-face veil contrary to the laws of the nation. When enacted, the law will impose a fine of approximately $190 and/or a citizenship course for women wearing a niqab or a burqa. Additionally, any person forcing a woman to wear a full-face veil will face a year in prison or a $19,000 fine, said the French government.

In June of 2009, President Nicholas Sarkozy announced his opposition of full-face veils in a speech to a joint session of the French Parliament saying, “The burqa is not welcome in French territory…In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity.” The speech was the first presidential address to the legislature in over a century.

United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced today that former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet will be the first head of the new UN agency, UN Women. Bachelet was elected the first woman president of Chile in 2006. As President, she fulfilled a campaign promise to institute a gender-balanced cabinet. She first gained visibility and popularity in Chile as minister of health in 2000, when she revamped Chile’s public health system by instituting 24-hour health care to cut waiting times that had previously been as long as three months. In 2002, she was appointed Chile’s Defense Minister and was the first woman in a Latin American country to hold the post.

Charlotte Bunch of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University, told the Canadian Press, Bachelet “has shown an ability to bring women’s rights and gender perspectives onto mainstream agendas, which is one of the challenges that we’ve been working for since the last U.N. women’s conference in Beijing in 1995.”

The UN voted unanimously in July to create a new office on women to be called the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). Official operations of UN Women will commence in January 2011. UN Women consolidates four formerly separate entities within the UN that work for the advancement of women: the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI), and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). The UN has estimated that UN Women will have a minimum budget of $500 million, which is twice the budget of all four former organizations combined.

The organization will have two basic functions. One is to assist intergovernmental bodies in forming policies and global standards. The other is to help Member States uphold the standards set by these bodies, along with providing the support to do so. UN Women’s work will be guided by the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Iranian women’s rights activist and journalist Shiva Nazar Ahari was released from the notorious Evin Prison yesterday on approximately $500,000 bail. Ahari had been held since December 2009 on a number of charges, including “waging war against God,” according to Radio Free Europe.

Ahari was arrested while traveling to attend the funeral of dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. According to Reuters, an Iranian opposition website reported that, while in prison, Ahari has spent more than 100 days in solitary confinement.

Ahari was also arrested in June 2009 shortly after the controversial reelection of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. She was released on bail after three months. Her former lawyer, Shadi Sadr, was beaten and arrested in July 2009 by plainclothes police officers as part of the government crackdown on dissidents. It is believed that Sadr and Ahari were held in the same ward at Evin Prison until Sadr was released on approximately $50,000 bail eleven days after her arrest.

Seven women who had been imprisoned in Guanajuato state in Mexico after alleged abortions were freed yesterday. Women’s rights activist Veronica Cruz, who has been working on the women’s behalf, told the Associated Press that the women were “innocent” and that “they all suffered miscarriages.” The state convicted the women under a state law that addressed “homicide against a close relative” by arguing that they had given birth to live infants and that the infants had died due to mistreatment and neglect.

The women’s sentences were reduced earlier this week to 3 to 8 years after the state passed a law that still considers abortion “infanticide,” but that also found the women’s sentences to be “inappropriate, given that they were excessively punitive and ranged from 25 to 35 years,” reported the Associated Press. The women were released on account of time already served.

According to Agence France Presse, abortion is punishable by a prison sentence in half of Mexico’s 32 states. Currently in Mexico, abortion is legal only in Mexico City. The Mexican Supreme Court ruled 8 to 3 in 2008 Mexico City’s law allowing abortion in the first trimester is constitutional. Outside of Mexico City, abortions are allowed only in cases of rape, if a woman’s life is in danger, or if there are severe fetal abnormalities. Under the Mexico City law, all public hospitals are required to give patients free abortions, but individual doctors can refuse to carry out the procedure.

The European Union traded barbs with Iran today regarding the case of Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, an Iranian woman who was convicted of adultery and originally sentenced to death by stoning. During European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso’s first State of the Union address, he said that he was “appalled” by the original sentence and that is “Barbaric beyond words,” reported the Associated Press. Women executed by stoning are buried up to their necks (men are buried up to the waist) and a crowd throws stones at their heads, which slowly leads to death.

Ramin Mehmanparast, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, responded to Barroso and said, “If release of all those who have committed murder is considered defending human rights, all European countries can…free murderers in defense of human rights,” according to the Associated Press.

Reports out of Iran also indicate that Ashtiani received up to 99 lashes last week because she supposedly appeared in a photo in the Times of London without a headscarf. The photograph was later found to be of another woman. The Times claims that Iranian officials knew the image was not of Ashtiani and that they lashed her “to make her suffer for an international campaign to save her that that exposed so much iniquity,” reported CNN.

This case began in 2006, when Ashtiani was convicted of having extramarital relations with two men who killed her husband. While she initially received a sentence of 99 lashes for adultery, during an appeal of her case, the court sentenced Ashtiani to death by stoning. Her case has caused international outrage due to the inconclusive evidence presented and the barbaric nature of execution by stoning. The stoning sentence was soon commuted as a result of international pressure, but Ashtiani could still be executed by hanging. As a result of the high profile nature of the case, Ashtiani’s lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei, is currently seeking political asylum in Oslo, Norway along with his family and faces a warrant for his arrest in Iran.