A study released on Sunday shows that enforcement of civil rights laws by the federal government has declined in the past five years. The study, performed by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, found that while the number of complaints received by the Justice Department in regard to civil rights violations remained constant, the number of criminal charges filed by federal prosecutors declined from 159 in 1999 to 84 in 2003, the New York Times reports. Similarly, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other federal investigative agencies recommended prosecution in one-third less civil rights cases in the same period of time, from 3,053 cases in 1999 to 1,903 in 2003. Cox News Service reports that out of these recommendations, prosecutors filed charges in only 5 percent of the cases. “This confirms what everyone in the civil rights community has known for the past four years, which is that President Bush’s Justice Department does not have a commitment to full enforcement of the nation’s civil rights laws,” Christopher Anders, legislative counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told the Associated Press. Civil rights violations generally include racial violence, abusive police tactics, blocked access to women’s health and abortion clinics, and slavery or involuntary servitude. The Justice Department responded to the study on Monday, dismissing the research as “incorrect,” according to Cox News Service. David Burnham, one of the reports’ co-authors, defended the research, explaining that the statistics were obtained from the Executive Office of United States Attorneys, a part of the Justice Department, through the Freedom of Information Act. These statistics are the same numbers used in the Justice Department’s reports to Congress and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Burnham told the Associated Press. Additionally, records obtained from federal courts substantiated the decline in civil rights cases. Civil rights cases account for a small percentage of the 99,341 criminal prosecutions put forth by the Justice Department last year, the New York Times reports. While the department’s overall caseload rose approximately 10 percent in the past five years, civil rights and environmental cases were the only two kinds of prosecutions that experienced a decrease.
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Female Hostages Released In Afghanistan and Iraq
Three United Nations election workers, two women and a man, were freed unharmed this morning after being abducted from a United Nations vehicle last month in Afghanistan. Shqipe Hebibi from Kosova, Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland, and Angelito Nayan, a Filipino diplomat, were kidnapped on a busy street in Kabul by armed men on October 28. They were the first foreigners abducted in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. Their abductions raise fear that they could be the start of a string of deadly kidnappings that are similar to what has been occurring in Iraq.
Meanwhile, a Polish woman who was abducted in Iraq last month has also been freed. Teresa Borcz-Khalifa, a resident of Iraq for 30 years, was kidnapped from her home by the Abu Bakr al-Seddiq Salafist Brigades, reports Reuters. Last week, Margaret Hassan, a humanitarian aid worker with CARE International and long-time resident of Iraq, was killed. A mutilated body of a Western woman was found in Falluja that has still not been identified.
Several leading international aid organizations have suspended operations in Iraq as a result of the increased attacks against aid workers, including CARE International, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Rescue Committee.
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Number of Female Prisoners Increases at a Higher Rate than Male Prisoners
The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics recently announced that the number of women prisoners in state and federal prisons is at an all time high and growing at nearly twice the pace of male prisoners. The Chicago Tribune reports that total number of women prisoners has increased 48 percent since 1995 to more than 100,000 for the first time, while the increase for men was 29 percent during the same time period. The prison population has grown despite a crime rate that has lowered over the past several years, according to the New York Times, and is attributed to laws created in the last decade that have lengthened prison sentences, including mandatory minimum sentencing legislation, three-strikes legislation, and truth-in-sentencing legislation. Marc Mauer, assistant director of a group called the Sentencing Project which advocates for alternatives to long prison terms, notes that half of those incarcerated are serving sentences for non-violent crimes. Mauer explains that this statistic and the dramatic increase in women prisoners are both results of the war on drugs. “It represents a sort of vicious cycle of women engaged in drug abuse and often connected with financial or psychological dependence with a boyfriend” or other man involved in drug crime, Mauer told the Chicago Tribune. Another alarming statistic reported by the Justice Department is that approximately 10 percent of African-American men between the ages of 25 and 29 are currently behind bars. An estimated 44 percent of all state and federal prisoners are African-American, in spite of the fact that, according to the US Census Bureau, African-Americans only comprise roughly 12.75 percent of the US population. JOIN the Feminist Majority
Poland’s Restrictive Abortion Laws Criticized by UN Committee
The United Nations Human Rights Committee recently criticized Poland’s strict abortion laws. According to Kaisernetwork, Poland’s laws “puts women’s lives at risk by encouraging them to seek illegal abortions, sometimes from untrained practitioners.” Women on Waves, the Dutch organization that traveled to Portugal last year to bring attention to the nation’s punitive abortion policies, estimates that 200,000 illegal abortions are conducted in Poland every year.
Abortion restrictions were reinstituted in Poland in the early 1990s after decades during which abortion on demand was the policy in the country. Currently, abortion is illegal in Poland except in cases of rape, incest, when the fetus is deformed, or when the woman’s life is in danger and doctors face up to three years in jail for performing illegal abortions. Poland’s Democratic Left Alliance is sponsoring a bill that will allow women to have abortions up to their 12th week of pregnancy, however no date has been set for the parliament to discuss the bill, reports Reuters.
Some conservative groups in Poland such as the Polish League of Families, a Catholic opposition party, are working to completely outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape, reports Reuters.
Meanwhile, several European women’s organizations are calling for a major mobilization to protect women’s sexual and reproductive rights in Europe. The Women’s World March will held in Marseille, France, in May 2005 to bring attention to the increasing threats made by anti-abortion lobbies in Europe, including the influence of the Catholic Church and conservative parties in European parliaments, to restrict abortion rights.
First Female Sheriff Elected in Dallas, Texas
Lupe Valdez, a Democratic, Latina, openly gay woman, won the election for sheriff in Dallas County, Texas. The New York Times explains that she defeated her opponent, Danny Chandler, a former chief deputy, by 17,000 votes. Valdez is the first female sheriff to be elected in Dallas County, as well as the first Hispanic sheriff to be elected. Dallas County also elected its first Hispanic district judge, and both are Democratic women. This election reflects a growing Democratic and Latino electorate in one of Texas’s largest urban counties, according to the Washington Post. During her childhood, she traveled and worked with her family of migrant workers. Her mother insisted on her, the youngest of eight, being educated, so they settled in San Antonio. She then worked her way through college, joined the Army Reserves, became a county jail guard, and applied for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. After becoming a federal guard, she attained a Master’s degree in Criminology and worked as an agent for the General Services Administration, the Agriculture Department, and finally, the Customs Service until she retired early to run for sheriff, as reported by the New York Times Valdez told the Washington Post, “It speaks very well of Dallas County, for them to be comfortable in looking at my credentials and feeling comfortable that I could do the job. What does female, what does Hispanic, what does any of this have to do with this? What is important is your experience, your ability, and your willingness to do the job.” LEARN MORE about the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Center for Women and Policing DONATE to support FMF’s work to increase the numbers of women at all ranks in law enforcement
Two Female Journalists and Women’s Rights Activists Arrested in Iran
Two leading female journalists were arrested this past week as part of the Iranian government’s crackdown on pro-democracy journalists and websites. According to the New York Times, Mahboubeh Abbas-Gholizadeh, the editor of the Farzaneh magazine and an outspoken women’s rights activist, was arrested on November 1. Fereshteh Ghazi, who writes about women’s rights issues in a daily newspaper, was also arrested last week.
According to Human Rights Watch, since September 7, the Iranian government has arrested journalists and online writers to “cripple the country’s growing network of independent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).” Several other journalists and online writers have been arrested, including Omid Memarian who is a well known pro-democracy figure and writer in Iran who writes extensively on youth-related issues in Iran. HRW is calling on the Iranian authorities to end their harassment and intimidation of peaceful critics. HRW is also urging for the immediate release of the activists and writers.
Iran‘s newly elected parliament is imposing more restrictions on women’s rights and is denying efforts for gender equality and women’s inheritance rights. In mid-October, a 13-year-old Iranian girl Jila Izadi, was sentenced to being stoned to death just months after another Iranian girl was publicly hung for allegedly engaging in sexual relations with an older man.
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King Releases Nepalese Women Imprisoned for Having Abortions
Nepal’s King Gyanendra granted amnesty to 12 female prisoners who were jailed for having abortions. Women’s groups have been urging for the release of the women prisoners since abortion was made legal in Nepal in 2002. Pinky Shah, program officer for the Rural Women’s Development and Unity Center in Nepal, estimates that there are as many as 30 women still in prison for undergoing abortions, BBC reports. Before 2002, women who terminated their pregnancies faced up to three years in prison.
Under the current law, according to BCC News, Nepalese women can undergo an abortion within 12 weeks of pregnancy, and up to 18 weeks if a woman is pregnant as a result of rape or incest. In addition, the law states that women can have abortions at any time if the health of the woman or the fetus is in danger.
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Over 1,000 Women Hospitalized For Back-Alley Abortions in Portugal
Health statistics reveal that over 1,000 Portuguese women were hospitalized last year as a result of complications from back-alley abortions. According to Agence France-Presse, between 20,000 to 40,000 clandestine abortions are performed annually in Portugal.
Abortion is strictly prohibited in Portugal except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger, in situations of sexual violence, or if there is a risk of damage to physical or mental health or possible congenital deformity. Despite recent polls that show that the majority of Portuguese citizens want to reform the punitive abortion laws, the right-wing government asserts that no new referendum will be held during its term that ends in 2006.
Earlier this year, the Dutch ship Women on Waves traveled to Portugal to raise awareness about the country’s strict abortion laws, and to provide medical abortions using mifepristone for Portuguese women in international waters off the coast. The small commercial vessel was blocked from entering Portuguese waters by two Navy ships.
The Feminist Majority Foundation has been working with Women on Waves since its first trip to Ireland three years ago, where abortion is illegal except to save a woman’s life. Margie Moore, director of Law Enforcement Operations for the Feminist Majority Foundation, was with Women on Waves in Portugal to provide security assistance.
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Immigrant Women at Highest Risk of Femicide in NYC
A report recently released by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), “Femicide In New York City: 1995-2002,” found women are more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than a stranger. Foreign-born women are at the highest risk. The findings also show the number of women killed by their partners has remained steady, despite an overall decrease in female homicides from 1995-2002. Foreign-born black and Hispanic women are three times more likely than US-born African-American and Hispanic women to be victims of intimate partner femicide, according to the study. Youth and poverty are also named among the risk factors; “a disproportionate number of relatively poor women,” 61 percent, who fall in the under $34,000 income group are victims. Women between the ages of 20 and 29 are most likely to be killed by their intimate partner (34 percent). Carolyn A. Kubitschek, a lawyer and expert on domestic violence, highlights the shortage of domestic violence shelters. “One of the big dilemmas is where can these women go. There are still battered women who need a place tonight and can’t find it,” she told the New York Times. October was Domestic Violence Awareness Month, coordinated by the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, which works to bring domestic violence to the front of public debate. DONATE to the Feminist Majority Foundation and support its National Center for Women in Policing
Activists Protest Murders of Young Women at the Mexican Border
Over 1,000 Mexicans and dozens of American and Canadian activists are demanding justice for the hundreds of women and girls murdered in Mexico’s border town of Juarez. The majority of victims, usually workers at US-owned assembly plants and factories known as maquiladoras, are found raped and strangled.
Over 200 US companies have located in Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, to exploit primarily young female workers at wages of approximately 40 cents an hour. The American companies have not provided adequate lighting, transportation, and other safety measures for these exploited workers as they travel to and from work. Lately, companies are pulling out of Juarez to find even cheaper labor in Southeast Asia.
Ramona Morales, whose 16-year-old daughter was killed in Juarez in 1995, has been traveling to cities across the United States to raise awareness about the problem. “Maybe with all of this we can get the support of the United States to finally find who killed our daughters,” she said, according to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, angering women’s rights activists, the Mexican government released a report last week that argues that there is little evidence that the murdered women were victims of serial killings or gangsters. Human rights and women’s rights groups have been accusing the Mexican authorities of responding to the murders incompetently and of failing to take the necessary actions to investigate the abductions and brutal murders of women and girls in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Mexico. “I think [the Mexican government] already know[s] who the killers are,” Maricela Ortiz, director of Return Our Daughters Home, told the New York Times. “I believe they know what is happening, and this network of complicity will not permit an easy solution, because the people who kill are rich and powerful.”
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Pakistan Proposes Harsher Punishments for Honor Killings and Forced Marriage
In a move that many human rights and women’s rights advocates see as a positive step forward, Pakistan’s lower house of Parliament passed legislation that proposes death sentences for certain honor killing cases. According to the New York Times, the proposed bill increases the prison term from seven years to life, and death sentences for the most extreme cases of honor killings. In addition, the bill contains language that increases the punishment for a person who forces a woman into marriage to ten years in jail, reports the Associated Press.
There have been 410 reported incidences of so-called “honor” killings, with many more going unreported, from January to September 2004, reports the Associated Press. Earlier this month, hundreds of Pakistani women’s rights and human rights activists and lawmakers demonstrated outside of Pakistan’s parliament to speak out against the government’s inaction on honor killings and violence against women.
Before the bill can become law it has to be approved by the upper house of Parliament and signed by President Pervez Musharraf.
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Three Election Workers Abducted in Afghanistan
Three election workers, believed to be two women and a man, were abducted from a United Nations vehicle today in Kabul. The attack has been claimed by a Taliban breakoff group called Jaish-e-Muslimeen (Army of Muslims), according to Reuters.
The driver of the car, an Afghan man, was beaten and left behind at the scene, according to Agence France Presse. Witnesses say that at least seven armed men stopped the vehicle in the rush hour traffic at lunch and put the election workers into a truck with tinted windows, Reuters reports. This attack is believed to be the first abduction of foreigners in Afghanistan.
The kidnapping comes on the day that the United Nations-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body finished counting ballots from the October 9 presidential election, in which President Hamid Karzai received at least 55 percent of the vote.
US Army Considers Including Women in New Combat Structure
The United States Army is currently in discussions with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s staff about formally including women in the new brigade combat team structure the Army plans to implement early next year. The new structure, comprised of “self-contained and self-reliant” combat units called “units of action,” would replace larger divisions that are more unwieldy, according to the Stars and Stripes. The US Army would like to have the ability to assign women to Forward Support Companies that would be permanently attached to the new units of action. Currently in both Iraq and Afghanistan, women are already active in units that support combat units, with the difference being that they are temporarily “attached” and not permanently assigned, the Stars and Stripes reports. While opponents of women in combat roles decry this proposal, insisting that it violates the ten-year-old ban barring women from combat units, Lt. Col. Chris Rodney, a spokesman for the US Army, has said that in modern war, there are no “front lines,” and that due to this any position in the Army can quickly become a combat role, the Washington Times reports. “The artificial designation of a combat zone has no reality in modern warfare, and it has only served to restrict women’s advancement in the military,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. According to the Women’s Research and Education Institute, roughly 10 percent of the US military serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are women. Since the United States invaded Iraq in March of 2003, 793 of the more than 1,000 US soldiers who have been killed were delineated as “combat deaths.” Twenty-four of those combat deaths were women, the Stars and Stripes reports. DONATE to the Feminist Majority Foundation and support its National Center for Women in Policing
Suicide Bomber Kills Afghan Girl and American Woman in Afghanistan
A suicide bomber killed an Afghan girl and an American woman and wounded five others in Kabul, Afghanistan yesterday. According to the Associated Press, the blast occurred in a busy shopping area popular with foreigners.
The 23-year-old American woman who was killed, Jamie Michalsky, worked as a translator in Uzbekistan. She was in Afghanistan seeking medical treatment for an injured hand. The Afghan girl who was killed was selling magazines on the street. Three NATO soldiers and two children were also wounded, reports the New York Times.
Meanwhile, 81 percent of the ballots have been counted showing President Hamid Karzai in the lead with almost 55 percent of the votes, reports the LA Times. While the Taliban did not launch any serious attacks during the elections, after security operations eased following the elections the Taliban claimed responsibility for several attacks, including an attack in southeastern Afghanistan that killed three American soldiers and their interpreter last Wednesday.
Gunmen Attack Bus Filled With Female Iraqi Airline Employees
Gunmen attacked a bus in Baghdad today carrying female employees of Iraqi Airways, killing one woman and injuring fourteen others. The attack comes just two days after Margaret Hassan, who heads Care International’s operations in Iraq, was kidnapped from her car en route to work.
As the violence increases in Iraq, threats against Iraqi women leaders and women working for aid agencies and foreign companies have been escalating in Iraq. Earlier this year, two female Italian aid workers were kidnapped and eventually released. In July, two Iraqi women working with British forces were killed when they were traveling to work, and another two Iraqi women working for the Coalition Provincial Authority were killed by gunmen while driving in a minibus in Baghdad.
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UNICEF: Violence and Sexual Exploitation Continue in Sudan
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that rape is still being used as a weapon to terrorize women and girls, their families, and their communities in Darfur, Sudan. According to Pamela Shifman, the UNICEF advisor on violence and sexual exploitation, every woman and girl that she met while in the Darfur camps said that they had been sexually assaulted themselves, or knew of someone who had been attacked, reports UN News Service.
Shifman wrote in her diary posted on UNICEF’s website that the women and girls she spoke to while in the camps in Darfur stated that they need security because they are not safe. According to Shifman, “So many women told the same story: they are terrified to leave to get firewood– soldiers prey on women and girls along the path to collect firewood. And the cruel part is the women and the girls have no choice but to take that dangerous path for their survival.”
Up to as many as 1.5 million people have been internally displaced and another 500,000 have fled to Chad since Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, started attacking villages last year. According to Reuters, the United Nations estimates that as many as 70,000 people have died from malnutrition and disease over the last seven months alone.
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Gender Action Plan for Women and Policing to be Launched in Northern Ireland
Margaret Moore, director of the National Center for Women and Policing (NCWP), will be a guest speaker for the Police Service of Northern Ireland next week at the launch of the Gender Action Plan for women and policing in Belfast, Ireland. The Gender Action Plan contains 33 recommendations to improve the recruitment, retention, and progression of women officers and staff. Moore will be speaking at the request of Commissioner Kathy O’Toole of Boston, who helped shape the Gender Action Plan when she previously served on a commission to improve policing services overall in Northern Ireland.
Commissioner O’Toole was a speaker at the NCWP Annual Leadership Training Conference in Washington, DC in 2002, discussing organizational change and the importance of gender balancing. O’Toole’s selection of Moore as a speaker reinforces the importance of the work performed by NCWP on gender issues and policing.
The National Center for Women and Policing, a division of the Feminist Majority Foundation, promotes increasing the numbers of women at all ranks of law enforcement as a strategy to improve police response to violence against women, reduce police brutality and excessive force, and strengthen community policing reforms.
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PA: Suits Involving State Police Sex Scandal Settled for $5M
Earlier this month, Pennsylvania State Police agreed to pay $5 million to four women in order to settle sexual assault allegations against state Trooper Michael Evans, as well as allegations against his commanders for not removing Evans from the force despite knowledge of his behavior. A joint statement released by Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller and three of the lawyers involved in the suits commended the victims for coming forward, and acknowledged that they were “seriously wronged” by Evans. Last summer, lawyers for the women uncovered a huge scandal after filing for the release of internal affairs reports to serve as exhibits in one of the suits. The information made public detailed troopers having sex in police cars and barracks, soliciting sex from prostitutes and informants, watching pornography while on duty, and dropping traffic violations for sex. In total, of 163 allegations of sexual misconduct filed during 1995 and 2001, 68 were substantiated, leading to the firing of 14 troopers Penny Harrington, founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Center for Women and Policing (NCWP), attributes the hostile behavior in part to the paucity of women in law enforcement. Harrington and others at the NCWP have seen that with more women in the police force, the number of harassment complaints are dramatically reduced. Harrington told the Philadelphia Daily News that the Pennsylvania police force is only four percent women, and needs to work harder on recruiting more female police officers. “I think the state police have had a huge wakeup call,” Harrington said, “They say they are serious about making changes. Only time will tell if that is true.” Evans is currently serving a 5-10 year prison sentence, after pleading guilty in 2000 to corruption of minors, indecent assault, solicitation to promote prostitution, official oppression and indecent exposure, according to USA Today. He will be eligible for parole in February of next year. LEARN MORE about the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Center for Women and Policing DONATE to support FMF’s work to increase the numbers of women at all ranks in law enforcement
Women on Waves Ship Blocked from Portugal Harbor
The Women on Waves ship, traveling to Portugal to bring attention to the nation’s punitive abortion policies, has been blocked from entering Portuguese waters. The Portuguese Defense Minister has called the small commercial vessel rented by Women on Waves a “threat to national security.” Portugal’s Defense Ministry has announced that it will use force if the small ship attempts to enter the harbor. Two ships from Portugal’s Navy are circling the Women on Waves vessel. According to Women on Waves, this reaction is well outside the bounds of international law and violates standard procedures within the European Union. Women on Waves, based in the Netherlands, is led by Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, the crusading Dutch doctor who is determined to make visible the suffering of women caused by outlawing abortion.
The Feminist Majority Foundation has been working with Women on Waves since its first trip to Ireland, where abortion is illegal except to save a woman’s life, three years ago. Margie Moore, director of Law Enforcement Operations for the Feminist Majority Foundation, is with Women on Waves to provide security assistance.
“Women on Waves is obviously striking a sensitive nerve. The Portuguese authorities and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church are afraid of opening the abortion debate in countries where abortion is illegal,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. “Women want choices and they know it. Italian women only got abortion legalized when hundreds of thousands marched in the streets and called for an abortion referendum.”
Women on Waves traveled to Portugal to raise awareness about Portugal’s strict abortion laws, and to provide medical abortions using mifepristone for Portuguese women in international waters off the coast of Portugal. The group plans to remain in international waters outside of Portugal until it receives permission to enter Portuguese waters. Women on Waves was invited to Portugal by several Portuguese women’s groups working to liberalize the country’s abortion laws.
Women on Waves last traveled to Poland, where it was able to successfully administer the first medical abortion in international waters. In both Poland and Ireland, the ship sparked a major public discussion on the abortion issue and resulted in significant increases in public support for legalizing abortion. The standoff between the small Women on Waves ship and the Portuguese Navy has already garnered significant press coverage in Portugal and in the European Union.
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Two Aid Workers Killed in Afghanistan
In another deadly attack against civilians, two Afghans working for a German aid agency were killed in southeastern Afghanistan. According to the Associated Press, a field officer and a driver working for the aid group Malester were killed in their car from gunshots.
These murders were the latest in a string of deadly attacks on relief workers, government employees, and private contractors in a Taliban-led movement to derail the democratic elections scheduled for October and to oust the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. Aid workers, both foreign and Afghan, have been the targets of Taliban-led attacks that have left more than 30 aid workers dead.
Meanwhile, according to IRIN News, 90 percent of eligible voters in Afghanistan have been registered, of which 41 percent are women. However, voter registration is very low in several provinces in the south and southeastern parts of the country. Due to the deteriorating security situation, as little as 9 percent of people have been registered in these areas. Another concern is that there is unbalanced female registration, reports IRIN News, with only 22 percent of women registered in the south compared with the 41 percent as the national average.
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