Migration Category: Global Old Site

Bangladesh’s high court ordered local authorities to find and protect a 16-year-old girl who received 101 lashes last month as punishment for becoming pregnant after she was raped last year. According to CNS News, the high court ruled in August that authorities must investigate punishments carried out outside of the judicial system after locally-issued fatwas resulted in several women being flogged, including “one who spoke to a man from a different community, another who filed a rape complaint, and a third who refused sexual advances made by a relative.”

In the current case, the girl was sentenced by village leaders to 101 lashes and her father was fined and warned that their family would be isolated if they refused to pay, according to The Daily Star. The girl reportedly was flogged on January 17th and collapsed and fainted during the beating.

The rape was discovered only after the girl was found to be seven months pregnant one month after being married off to a man from a neighboring village. The girl is now divorced and obtained an abortion. Her rapist, Enamul Mia of neighboring village Gabbari, was pardoned by the village council.

Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman of the Asian Human Rights Commission told CNS News that instances of village justice “becomes possible in [a] country where the basic rule-of-law institutions are completely dysfunctional and reluctant to provide justice to the ordinary people.” He also said that “shari’a provisions (fatwas) are being abused to facilitate the influential persons to do injustice to the poor and vulnerable groups, especially the women, in order to retain or increase their so-called power.”

A French parliamentary committee released a nearly 200 page report yesterday that recommends banning face veils in certain public spaces, including on public transportation and at schools, hospitals, and government offices. According to the New York Times, only 14 members of the 32 member committee voted, eight in favor of the report and six against.

According to the BBC, the report said that “the wearing of the full veil is a challenge to our republic. This is unacceptable. We must condemn this excess.” As the commission delivered the report, National Assembly President Bernard Accoyer said, “The full veil represents in an extraordinary way everything that France spontaneously rejects…It’s a symbol of the subjugation of women and the banner of extremist fundamentalism,” according to Reuters. Those who oppose the ban criticize it as xenophobic. Jamel Debbouze, a French comedian with Moroccan ancestry, told a radio station that, “people who go down that path [of the ban] are racists.”

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his opposition to the burqa, the head-to-toe garment worn by some Islamic women In a speech to a joint session of the French Parliament in June 2009. In this speech, he said “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,” reported the Wall Street Journal. This speech, the first presidential address to the legislature in over a century, urged the Parliament to examine the practice of Muslim women in France wearing the burqa. In 2004 the French Parliament passed a law banning students from wearing veils and other religious symbols in public schools.

It is estimated that only about 1,900 women in France wear the full veils that are the subject of the report.

Three leading members of the Haitian women’s movement were killed in the rubble of last week’s earthquake. Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan founded three of Haiti’s leading women’s rights organizations and worked together for decades.

Merlet fled Haiti in the 1970s, but returned in the 1980s because, as she once wrote, “as a Haitian woman, I must make an effort so that all together we can extricate ourselves from them.” She worked for the country’s Ministry for Gender and the Rights of Women for years at Chief of Staff and more recently as an adviser. She also founded Enfofamn, which works to raise awareness of women and their achievements. Eve Ensler, who was close friends with Merlet, told Democracy Now, “Myriam was a, she was a light. She was a force of Haiti. She was one of the great feminists. She was a radical feminist. We joked often about the fact that it was wild that she and Marie-Laurence, who’s the Minister of Women, were actually in power, that we had radical feminists in power.”

Coriolan founded Solidarite Fanm Ayisyen (Solidarity with Haitian Women), which is a women’s advocacy organization. Her daughter, Wani Thelusmon Coriolan, told CNN that “She loved her country. She never stopped believing in Haiti. She said that when you have a dream you have to fight for it…She wanted women to have equal rights. She wanted women to hold their heads high.”

Marcelin was a lawyer and actress who founded Kay Fanm, a women’s rights organization that focuses on domestic violence and making microloans to women business owners. Evans Paul, former mayor of Port-au-Prince mayor, knew Marcelin since she was 14. He told the Miami Herald that the public figures lost, including Marcelin, “will leave a huge void in the country because these were people who played an important role on behalf of the society…Haiti has lost a lot and it will take a long time before it can stand again.'”

The Afghan parliament rejected more than half of President Karzai’s cabinet nominees, including two women, late last week. Rejected nominees also included known warlords, including Ismail Khan. A third woman nominee, Amina Afzali, was confirmed as work and social affairs minister.

Sima Samar, who leads Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, had previously told Reuters, “I hope that men in Afghanistan will show that all the allegations that they are against women’s rights in their country can be removed and they would take action and vote for these women.”

Parliamentarian Mohammad Ali Sitigh told Morning Star Online that two women who were rejected were well-qualified and that “unfortunately, we have some lawmakers who, even if they see a woman who is very active, talented and well-educated, still can’t vote for a woman.”

According to the BBC, 17 of 24 nominees Karzai submitted two weeks ago were rejected. In the most recent vote 10 of 17 nominees were rejected.

Noushin Ebadi, sister of human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, and all arrested members of the activist group Mourning Mothers were released from prison yesterday. It is unclear whether One Million Signatures campaign founder Mansoureh Shojaee, journalist Morteza Kazemian, and other Iranian feminists remain imprisoned.

Shirin Ebadi told Al Jazeera that “The government arrested my sister and held her in prison in horrible conditions…They thought that by doing so they could keep me quiet. After three weeks they realized that there was no point and I wasn’t going to stay quiet. So they let her go.” Noushin Ebadi was arrested by Ministry of Intelligence agents in December.

At least 33 members of Mourning Mothers had been held in prison since Saturday after being arrested during a peaceful protest in Tehran. The group was formed after the widely publicized death of Neda Agha-Soltan last summer and members are mothers of protestors who have been killed, detained or are missing. The women typically wear black as a sign of mourning and regularly protest in the park where they were arrested.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the release of the Mourning Mothers members Wednesday. She said “If the Iranian government wants the respect of the international community, it must respect the rights of its people. It must govern through consent, and not coercion.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a statement yesterday urging the release of several dozen Iranian women activists who have been imprisoned since the weekend. The women are members of a group called Mourning Mothers, which was formed after the widely publicized death of Neda Agha-Soltan last summer.

Clinton said, “The United States urges the immediate and unconditional release of the dozens of members of the Mourning Mothers group who, according to reports, were violently dispersed and arrested by Iranian security forces during a peaceful vigil in Tehran on Saturday, January 9. These women, whose children have been killed, detained, or have gone missing in post-election violence in Iran, were exercising their universal right to peaceful expression, as they do every Saturday in a park not far from where Neda Agha-Soltan was killed on June 20. They have reportedly done nothing more than peacefully express their grief and seek accountability from their government. As a woman, a mother and a person of conscience, my heart goes out to them and their families. If the Iranian government wants the respect of the international community, it must respect the rights of its people. It must govern through consent, and not coercion.”

According to the Straits Times, the women typically wear black as a sign of mourning and regularly protest in the park where they were arrested. According to the Mourning Mothers website, an unidentified witness said, “They would not allow anyone to even sit on the benches or congregate…After about 70 mothers entered the park, security forces engaged them and started chasing them, grabbing them, and forcing them into police vans. They used a lot of violence and insults in the process,” reported CNN.

In a speech last week to the Center for Global Development, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed how a focus on women and girls will be a key part of the Obama administration’s new development strategy. Clinton stated that it is “time to elevate development as a central pillar of all that we do in our foreign policy” and “past time to rebuild USAID into the world’s premier development agency.” She referenced the Obama administration’s desire to build a partnership-based development model that implements “evidence-based strategies with clear goals.”

One of the steps the administration is already taking to ensure lasting results in global development is investing in women and girls. Clinton said, women and girls “are critical to advancing social, economic, and political progress. Women and girls are one of the world’s greatest untapped resources. Investing in the potential of women to lift and lead their societies is one of the best investments we can make. You all know the studies that have shown when a woman receives even just one year of schooling, her children are less likely to die in infancy or suffer from illness or hunger, and more likely to go to school themselves.”

She continued, “So today, the United States is taking steps to put women front and center in our development work. We are beginning to disaggregate by gender the data we collect on our programs, to measure how well our work is helping improve women’s health, income, and access to education and food. We’re starting to design programs with the needs of women in mind – by hiring more women as extension workers to reach women farmers, or women health educators to improve outreach to women and girls. And we are training more women in our partner countries to carry forward the work of development themselves – for example, through scholarships to women agricultural scientists in Kenya.”

“This is not only a strategic interest of the United States; it is an issue of great personal meaning and importance to me, and one that I have worked on for almost four decades. I will not accept words without deeds when it comes to women’s progress. I will hold our agencies accountable for ensuring that our government and our foreign policy support the world’s women and achieve lasting, meaningful results on these issues.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke Friday on the goals outlined at the 1995 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the conference. Clinton reviewed some of the progress that has been made since the Cairo conference but focused most of her speech (see video) on what must be done to move forward.

She asked the audience to “remember what was expected of us, [that] all governments will make access to reproductive healthcare and family planning services a basic right.” The following were among her remarks:

“We have made measurable progress since 1994 in improving the health and the lives of women and children, especially girls. For example, the use of modern contraceptives worldwide has increased from under 10 percent in the 1960s to 43 percent in 2008. We have greater access to neo-natal care, including medicines that prevent the spread of HIV from mother to child. We’ve significantly increased child survival rates. The number of girls enrolled in schools around the world has gone up… However, vast inequities remain…Nearly half the women in the developing world deliver their babies without a nurse, a midwife, a doctor, or access to crucial medical care. Global rates of maternal mortality remain perilously high; one woman dies every minute of every day in pregnancy or childbirth, and for every woman who dies, another 20 suffer from injury, infection, or disease every minute… More than 215 million women worldwide lack access to the modern forms of contraception, and this contributes to the nearly 20 million unsafe abortions that take place every year. Sexually transmitted diseases, of course including, but not limited to, HIV and AIDS, claim millions of lives annually among women. Fistula destroys the lives of millions, and it is often the result of pregnancies that occur when a girl is too young. An estimated 70 million– that is 70 million women and girls worldwide – have been subjected to female genital cutting… Investing in the health of women, adolescents, and girls is not only the right thing to do; it is also the smart thing to do. That is why we are integrating women’s issues as key elements of our foreign policy agenda.”

Clinton also outlined the goals and priorities of the Obama Administration. She said that they “are committed to meeting the Cairo goals” and “have pledged new funding, new programs, and a renewed commitment to achieve Millennium Development Goal Five, namely a [three-fourths] reduction in global maternal mortality, and universal access to reproductive healthcare.”

At least 33 Iranian women activists were arrested yesterday during a peaceful protest in Tehran. The women are members of a group called Mourning Mothers, which was formed after the widely publicized death of Neda Agha-Soltan last summer. Members of the group are mothers of protestors who have been killed, detained, or are missing. According to the Straits Times, the women regularly gather in the park where they were arrested to protest, typically wearing black as a sign of mourning.

According to the Mourning Mothers website, an unidentified witness said, “They would not allow anyone to even sit on the benches or congregate…After about 70 mothers entered the park, security forces engaged them and started chasing them, grabbing them, and forcing them into police vans. They used a lot of violence and insults in the process,” reported CNN.

Arrests continue in Iran against women’s activists. In December, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi’s sister; a professor in dentistry, Noushin Ebadi; Mansoureh Shojaee, a founder of the One Million Signatures campaign for women’s equality in Iran; and Morteza Kazemian, a journalist, were arrested by Ministry of Intelligence agents. Somayeh Rashidi, also with the One Million Signatures Campaign, was also targeted with a search of her home and a summons to court.

The One Million Signatures Campaign, which seeks to collect one million signatures against the legal discrimination women face under Iranian law, has been particularly targeted. A number of activists associated with the campaign have been arrested and imprisoned in recent years, including American graduate student and feminist activist Esha Momeni.

As of January 1, the HIV travel bans instituted in the United States and South Korea were lifted. President Obama first announced the end of the twenty-two-year ban on visitors and immigrants entering the US in October. Michel Sidibe, UNAIDS Executive Director, called the development “a victory for human rights on two sides of the globe.”

According to UNAIDS, there are HIV-specific travel restrictions impacting entry, stay, and/or residence in 57 countries. The HIV travel ban in the US, originally enacted in 1987, prohibited foreign nationals with HIV from obtaining visas for travel to the US and prevented them from becoming legal permanent residents.

The lifting of the travel ban has a number of consequences including lifting a mandatory HIV test for all applicants for immigration or asylum, ending forced geographic separation of some families, and allowing HIV-positive individuals to travel to the US for pleasure or academic purposes. The change also allows the US to host international AIDS conferences. According to AIDS Beacon, the 2012 International AIDS Conference is planned for Washington, DC.

Lisa Power, who is the head of policy at the UK-based HIV advocacy and charity group Terrence Higgins Trust, said “Removing the ban is long overdue and we congratulate the US government on seeing economic and medical sense…Blanket entry bans have no justification on public health grounds and only increase stigma. We hope other countries with similar bans in place will now remove them too,” reported PinkNews.

According to a Human Rights Campaign press release, former President Bush signed a bill last year that removed the language of the travel ban from law and gave the Department of Health and Human Services regulatory authority concerning whether HIV should remain on the list of communicable diseases that bars travelers from entering the US.

The United States military announced late last month that it was reversing its new policy that allowed female soldiers and their sexual partners in Iraq to be court-martialed in the event of a pregnancy. The revised policy went into effect January 1st and according to a spokesman for the United States military in Iraq “does not include a pregnancy provision,” reported CNN.

The original policy prohibited soldiers in Iraq from “becoming nondeployable for reasons within the control of the soldier,” which included “becoming pregnant or impregnating a soldier…resulting in the redeployment of the pregnant soldier.”

Major General Anthony Cucolo, the US commander in Iraq who instituted the rule, told the BBC that the policy was intended to protect the safety of his troops. “I’ve got a mission to do, I’m given a finite number of soldiers with which to do it and I need every one of them. So I’m going to take every measure I can to keep them all strong, fit and with me for the twelve months we are in the combat zone,” he said.

General Cucolo faced considerable criticism from veterans, women’s rights groups, and lawmakers after the policy was announced. Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) wrote a letter to the Army that stated, “Although Major General Cucolo stated today that a pregnant soldier would not necessarily be punished by court-martial under this policy, we believe the threat of criminal sanctions in the case of pregnancy goes far beyond what is needed to maintain good order and discipline. This policy could encourage female soldiers to delay seeking critical medical care with potentially serious consequences for mother and child.” Christian Science Monitor.

The Mexico City assembly approved a bill Monday permitting same-sex couples to marry, reports The Guardian. It is the first major Latin American city to do so. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is expected to sign the bill, which alters the city code to define marriage as “the free uniting of two people,” instead of its current definition as a union between a man and a woman.

If the bill becomes law, same-sex couples will gain a series of rights, including the ability to legally adopt children, obtain joint bank loans, inherit wealth, and be added to their spouse”s insurance. Mexico City has recognized civil unions since 2007, but the unions did not confer legal rights.

Mexico would become the 8th country in the world in which same-sex marriage is legal. Gay rights activists and progressive lawmakers praised the vote and celebrated in the city legislature.

“Mexico City has put itself in the vanguard,” said Mexico City legislator Victor Hugo Romo. “This is a historic day.”

The conservative National Action Party and the Roman Catholic Church opposed the bill and called on Mayor Ebrard to veto it. The NAP has promised to challenge the bill in court if Ebrard signs it.

Liberals are backing the bill and cited a triumph over hate and discrimination. “For centuries, unfair laws prohibited marriage between whites and blacks, between Europeans and Indians,” legislator Romo said. “Today, all the barriers have disappeared.”

A Pakistani primary school for girls was destroyed Monday in the country’s Khyber district, near Peshawar, which is in the western region bordering Afghanistan. No one was injured in the bombing, but reports indicate that explosives planted and detonated around the building destroyed all five school rooms. According to the Daily Mail, at least 4 girls’ schools and 6 schools total have been destroyed in the Khyber region, which is the main land bridge between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Rahim Gul Khattak, a senior Pakistani government official, told the Agence France Presse, “They are Taliban. They are the same people who do not want children to get an education.”

In Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, violence against schools that educate girls has been part of campaigns against the education of women. In Pakistan’s Swat Valley, more than 130 primarily all girl schools have been destroyed in the past year, allegedly by the Taliban. In total, hundreds of schools have been destroyed in Pakistan’s northwest region over the past several years. During the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which lasted until 2001, Afghan girls were forbidden to attend school. To date, approximately 1,000 girls’ or co-educational schools have been bombed or burned in Afghanistan. Attacks on girls’ schools in Pakistan have increased in recent months.

Activists from 17 Arab countries met in Cairo for a groundbreaking conference to address the pervasive sexual harassment of women in the region this week. According to the Associated Press, sexual harassment including verbal harassment and physical threats like groping or pinching, are going unchecked in the region because incidents are frequently not reported, law enforcement ignores reported incidents, and established law does not effectively punish perpetrators. This continuous harassment is driving women to both confine themselves to their homes and wear increasingly conservative clothing.

Egyptian activist Nehad Abul Komsan, who was a key organizer of the conference, said, “we are facing a phenomena that is limiting women’s right to move…and is threatening women’s participation in all walks of life,” according to Associated Press. Research unveiled at the conference indicated that more than 30 percent of Lebanese women, 83 percent of Egyptian women, and 90 percent of Yemeni women have experienced sexual harassment. According to a 2008 study by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Right, which organized the conference, of the women who had reported instances of sexual harassment to the center, only 12 percent also made a complaint with police.

Egypt’s deputy parliament speaker, Zeinab Radwan, spoke at the conference and asserted the need for a sexual harassment law in her country, which does not have a law that defines sexual harassment. According to Agence France Presse, Al-Destour newspaper reported that Radwan said, “There must be a law to protect Egyptian society from collapse…There is a savage attack on Egyptian women with sexual harassment on the streets. It has gone beyond all limits with the harassment of children.”

Spain’s ruling Socialist Party agreed last week to remove a provision to their abortion reform bill that would have allowed girls between age 16 and 18 to obtain abortions without their parents’ knowledge. The revised version of the bill also includes a provision that allows doctors who register as “conscientious objectors” to refuse to perform the procedure. The center-right Basque Nationalist Party will now vote for the bill “as its demands have been incorporated,” according to Agence France Presse.

The new version of the bill allows for an exception to the parental notification provision if there is a “certain danger of family violence, threats, pressure, abuse, family exclusion, or distress.” Carmen Monton, the Spanish Socialist Party’s spokeswoman on women’s issues said, “the important thing is that the consent comes from women, regardless of age…The parents will be informed and there will be exceptions. I thinks it’s a good agreement,” according to the Associated Press.

Currently, abortion is legal in Spain only in cases of rape, severe fetal abnormalities, or when the mother’s mental or physical health is at risk. The proposed reforms would legalize abortion up to the 14th week of pregnancy. If a mother’s health is at risk or if the fetus has a serious or incurable illness, the procedure will be permitted up to 22 weeks.

The reform of abortion laws is part of the social change program undertaken by Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose Socialist government has removed religion from the public education curriculum, reformed divorce laws, and legalized gay marriage since assuming power in 2004.

The Ugandan parliament unanimously passed a bill late last week that bans female genital mutilation (FGM) in the country. According to United Press International, those who are convicted of performing FGM will face up to 10 years in prison and can face life sentences in instances where the girl dies from the procedure. Parliament is also considering an amendment to the bill that would allow compensation for victims of FGM.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni originally announced plans to pass a law banning FGM in July. Fred Opolot, a government spokesman, told CNN, “A majority of Ugandans felt it is a disgusting act, but you have to remember that this is a cultural belief that has been practiced for generations…that’s what took the bill so long to pass.”

FGM is the partial or total removal of external genitalia. The practice both increases the risk of HIV transmission and increases infant and maternal mortality rates. In many cases, FGM decreases women’s sexual satisfaction. Approximately 3 million young women annually are forced to undergo FGM as a form of birth control and as initiation into womanhood. FGM is practiced as a rite of passage in 28 African countries.

Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider, who are sharing this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine with Jack Szostak, called for wider opportunities for women in the sciences in advance of receiving the prize last week. Blackburn, Greider, and Szostak, who are all American, are sharing the award “for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase” and therefore protect themselves from degradation.

Blackburn told the Associated Press, “The career structure [in the sciences] is very much a career structure that has worked for men…But many women, at the stage when they have done their training really want to think about family…and they just are very daunted by the career structure. Not by the science, in which they are doing really well.”

Greider also indicated a desire to see an increase in the number of women in decision-making positions and on committees. She told the Associated Press, “I think that something active needs to be done to [achieve parity in the highest positions] because there [have] been many, many years where there have been women coming in at a 50 percent level, and yet the levels at the upper echelons hasn’t really changed very much.”

Only 10 women have won the Nobel in Medicine and Blackburn and Greider are the first women to have shared a Nobel in science. This year’s awards are also notable because a record number of women (5 of 13 honorees) are receiving prizes. In addition to Blackburn and Greider’s honors, American Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. Romanian-born author Herta Mueller won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her depictions of the “landscape of the dispossessed” behind the iron curtain. Israeli Ada Yonath is sharing the Nobel in Chemistry with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz for their work studying “the structure and function of the ribosome.”

Somayeh Rashidi, an Iranian women’s rights activist with the One Million Signatures Campaign, was targeted this morning with a search of her home and a summons to court. She told Change for Equality, that she “asked the security officials to provide me with identification, but they refused, claiming instead that [she] will find out in the future what intelligence agency they are working with. [She] also objected to the search and seizure of property belonging to [her] roommates, but the security officials did not pay any attention to [her] protests.” Rashidi was also arrested in November in connection to public protests and spent two days in prison. Today’s search is just the latest in a series of arrests of or attacks/threats towards Iranian women’s rights activists.

The One Million Signatures Campaign, which seeks to collect one million signatures against the legal discrimination women face under Iranian law, has been particularly targeted. A number of activists associated with the campaign have been arrested and imprisoned in recent years, including American graduate student and feminist activist Esha Momeni.

Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Laureate and one of Iran’s leading human rights defenders, is also being harassed and her family is being targeted. Iranian authorities not only froze her bank account, but also broke into Ebadi’s safe deposit box and stole her Nobel medal, which has since been returned, according to the LA Times.

Omid Memarian, an exiled Iranian journalist, told the Daily Beast, “I talked to Shirin Ebadi just a few days ago. The authorities have summoned her husband, brother, and sister…Her organization in Iran cannot operate freely. She has been the most significant voice for human rights in Iran over the last five months. Harassing her is a very intimidating signal to others.”

According to the Daily Beast, in addition to the continued harassment of women’s rights activists, last month “Iranian state television ran a documentary attacking the nation’s women’s rights movement.” Airing of the documentary preceded an announcement earlier this month from the head of Iran’s state television, Ezatollah Zarghami, who declared that state-sponsored television programs will henceforth prohibit women who appear on air from using make-up. Zarghami told the newspaper Eternad that “make-up by women during television programs is illegal and against Islamic Sharia law. There should not be a single case of a woman wearing make-up during a program.”

Ugandan legislators announced today that proposed legislation that would have imposed life imprisonment as the minimum sentence for being gay and would have allowed for the death penalty is being altered to remove both punishments, but still would introduce imprisonment and potentially counseling to reverse offenders’ sexual orientation. According to Bloomberg, the new version of the bill will be presented to the Ugandan Parliament in approximately two weeks.

The legislation formerly allowed life imprisonment for even a single homosexual act and allowed the death penalty in cases where the gay individual is a “serial offender”, HIV positive, a “person of authority” over the other partner, or in cases where the “victim” is younger than 18. According to the Associated Press, the legislation also proposes a seven year prison term for any person who “aids, abets, counsels or procures another to engage of acts of homosexuality;” a seven year term for landlords convicted of renting to gay individuals; and a three year term for anyone of “religious, political, economic or social authority” who does not report any knowledge of homosexual acts.

Uganda’s minister of state for ethics and integrity James Nsaba Buturo, told the Guardian UK recently that the government aims to pass the legislation before the end of the year and is willing to lose funding and withdraw from international treaties, including the UN’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights, if necessary. Buturo said, “We are talking about anal sex. Not even animals do that…We believe there are limits to human rights.”

Gay Ugandan activist Frank Mugisha told the Associated Press,”This bill is promoting hatred…We’re turning Uganda into a police state. It will drive people to suicide.” As activists within the country are speaking out, the proposed law has incited widespread international criticism. Despite the fact that anti-gay sentiment in Uganda has been stoked by US Evangelical leaders, dozens of American Christian leaders signed a joint statement (see PDF) condemning the law. The Canadian government has also reportedly described the proposed law as “reprehensible, vile and hateful.”