Madagascar: Womens Rights, Human Rights

From All Africa:

The political situation in Madagascar is far from improving, after several unsuccessful attempts from national, regional and international mediators to resolve the political crisis during more than a year.

The cases of human rights violations have been much less publicised than the power struggles among the proponents of the political crisis, not only because such information is not of the kind that the authorities would like to publicise, but also because it has not attracted the attention of the international mediators involved in the protracted process for the resolution of the political crisis, nor that of the mainstream media.

Thus, very few local newspapers have reported on the ongoing campaign by human rights defenders for the immediate release of the so-called 'political detainees' who had been arrested by the police during the street demonstrations of September 2009 and had been waiting in vain for eighth months for their cases to be addressed.

Uzbek Women Sterilized by Stealth

From the Times Online:

According to human rights groups, tens of thousands of young women like Zavidova have been sterilised without their consent in the authoritarian former Soviet state of Uzbekistan.

Uzbek sources say the measure was ordered by Islam Karimov, the president, who has ruled with an iron fist for 20 years. The policy is aimed at keeping down the country’s poor population — with 28m people, it is Central Asia’s most densely populated state.

Activists say mass sterilisation began in 2003, but was eased after two years following an outcry. It is said to have restarted in February this year, when the health ministry ordered doctors to recommend sterilisation as an “effective contraceptive”. Critics claim every doctor was told to persuade “at least two women” a month to have the procedure. Doctors who failed faced reprisals and fines.

Exceptional Women in the Medieval Courtroom

From Legal History Blog.

A recent ".... panel focused on the unique place women had in the court room during the Middle Ages in Spain, France and Italy. Each paper presented a difficult legal situation involving women that required courts to adapt or change the law in order to properly address the issue."

Featured papers included:

• “Facing off from the Margins: Female Slaves and Jews in Medieval Procedural Law” by Marie Kelleher
• “Avoiding Great Harm, Danger, and Absurdity: Legal Protection for Wives with Absent Husbands” by Jamie Smith
• “Abandoned Wives and the Law in Late-Medieval Champagne” by Sara McDougall

Grateful for any further details regarding this panel and any outcomes / findings.

Fate of Somali Women

From AsiaOne News:

Hyenas, rape, kidnappings - there is no shortage of dangers for women in the grim refugee camps of northern Somalia.

But it is still better than the horrors they fled: civil war battles in Mogadishu, drought in neighbouring Ethiopia, inter-clan warfare and what they say was state-sponsored ethnic persecution and killings.

Many have "lost" their husbands. Some men abandoned their families, others tried to cross the Gulf of Aden into Yemen and have given no sign of life since. Some are still part of the family but are away eking out a living herding livestock.

The wastelands on the edge of Galkayo, a large swathe of low thorn scrub where millions of plastic bags flutter in the breeze, are home to several camps.

Without men the women are constantly at risk of attack. They have to pay for guards at night.

NWFN STATEMENT: Solidarity with Honduran women in struggle

From Workers World:

The following statement was issued to the women of Honduras who are organizing against the illegal military coup and for the restoration of President Manuel Zelaya. The statement was signed by women activists and leaders from around the U.S.

The National Women’s Fightback Network stands in solidarity with all of our Honduran sisters who are in the resistance movement in opposition to the illegal Micheletti government.

We support all of the courageous women who are opposing the criminal military coup d’etat, with special recognition to all of you who are playing a prominent role in the leadership of the resistance movement.

Your strength, bravery and determination are an inspiration to women worldwide.

The National Women’s Fightback Network wholly backs all of those who are fighting for a new society in Honduras and a Constitution that puts people’s needs first, and who are demanding the reinstatement of the democratically elected government of President Manuel Zelaya.

We join with progressive forces around the world who are speaking out to deplore the coup government’s political repression, its illegal decrees against your democratic rights to organize, march and speak out, and all of its attempts to suppress the strong and resolute people’s movement.

The National Women’s Fightback Network is in solidarity with all of your demands for women’s rights, which have been put forward by Women in Resistance and other popular women’s organizations and activists.

We are with you in the fight for a true People’s Constitution which guarantees women’s social, political and economic rights; this includes guaranteed access to employment, land, territory, health, education and much more. It also insures women’s participation in the new Constitutional Assembly—an absolute necessity.

We know that women in struggle throughout the world are with you at this crucial time. You have our utmost solidarity and heartfelt sisterhood.

Fary Moini

From VOA News:

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States and the subsequent allied war in Afghanistan, a registered nurse from California wanted to help innocent people in the Muslim world who were caught in the violence.

In this week's edition of our series Making a Difference, we meet an Iranian-born woman who says education is the best way to help the people of Afghanistan, especially women and children.

In 2001, Fary Moini traveled to Pakistan where she volunteered in a refugee clinic, helping to deliver babies. She says the lack of supplies was shocking.

"There were no bed sheets, no hot water, no heater at all. During delivery, electricity was gone and we had to use a flashlight, and doctors were using food gloves. Without any anesthesia or anything, we delivered the baby with a flashlight," she explains, "I'll never forget I went back, and I sat in a chair, and I felt sick. And tears were running down my face, and they said, 'What is wrong with you?' And I said, 'What is wrong with me!? What is this?' I mean, it was so inhumane!"

Moini's experience in the clinic got her thinking about what she could do to help the people of Afghanistan over the long term.

With help from the service organization Rotary International, she raised nearly a quarter-of-a-million dollars to build a school in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. The school opened in 2004.

During eight years and 11 trips to Afghanistan, Fary Moini says she has encountered some criticism from local men. But for the most part, she says they seem to accept her and her efforts.

Moini says that the best way to educate women in Afghanistan is to educate men as well -- convincing them that schooling their sisters and daughters will benefit them and their society.

Iran: Courage Award for Women

From Reuters:

A group of women who are risking imprisonment to collect one million signatures on a petition demanding greater women's rights in Iran were presented on Tuesday with the Anna Politkovskaya award for courage.

The annual prize, presented in memory of the campaigning Russian journalist who was murdered three years ago in Moscow, is awarded by Reach All Women (RAW) in War, a human rights group which focuses on stopping violence against women in conflict situations.

"We gave them the award because they are an extremely brave and courageous group of women and they are really changing the society in Iran, which is extremely difficult," RAW in War founder Mariana Katzarova told Reuters.

"They live a life of courage in the face of grave danger, just as Anna did," added Katzarova, a Bulgarian who created the award after spending 15 years working in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya.

The One Million Signatures campaign, launched in 2006, aims to petition the Iranian parliament asking for the revision and reform of current laws which discriminate against women in Iran.

RAW in War says some campaign members have been imprisoned for acting against national security in Iran and disrupting public order, while others have been given suspended prison sentences.

Activists say women in Iran, while able to vote, drive cars and hold most jobs, are subject to discrimination that makes them second-class citizens in divorce, inheritance, child custody, legal matters and other areas of life.

Iranian Women Honoured

From Khaleej Times:

Three Iranian women human rights campaigners Monday received the Lech Walesa Prize.

Shadi Sadr, Ladan Boroumand and Roya Boroumand were honoured for their promotion of “human rights, freedom of expression and democracy in Iran”, the Lech Walesa Foundation said in a statement.

Sadr, a legal expert and journalist, is a leading figure in the campaign against stoning as a punishment in Muslim countries, the foundation noted.

The Boroumands, meanwhile, are in charge of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, which on its website logs human rights violations, and campaigns in particular against racism.

The 100,000-euro (147,000-dollar) prize was created in 2008 to “reward those who work for understanding and cooperation among nations in the name of freedom and the values of Solidarity,” the trade union which Walesa headed in the 1980s to combat Poland’s then communist regime.

Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his non-violent struggle. He became post-war Poland’s first democratically-elected president in 1990, a year after the collapse of communist rule.

Besides Walesa, the prize committee includes former anti-communist Czech dissident and ex-president Vaclav Havel, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former Polish foreign minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski.

The inaugural prize last year went to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah for his contribution towards inter-faith dialogue, as well as charity work including sponsoring an operation to separate conjoined twin girls from Poland.

Uganda: Empowering Women

From Frances Emorut @ New Vision Online:

OVER 600 women in Hoima district were on Friday sensitised on marriage and property laws to make them aware of their rights.This follows complaints by the resident district commissioner, Martha Asiimwe, and the district chairman, George Tinka Bagoonza, that many women flocked their offices complaining of husbands abandoning them.

“Most of the complaints brought in my office are about marriage and property. Some women complained that their husbands abandoned them and ran to Kampala,” Bagoonza said.

He was addressing women at Holping Hotel in Hoima district during a sensitisation workshop organised by the Uganda association of women lawyers.

Rhonah Babweteera, a lawyer, told the women that they had a right to share property equally in case the marriage was dissolved.

She advised women not to allow relatives to grab property when their husbands die, saying the property belonged to them and their children.

Asiimwe commended the association for the help they rendered to the Hoima women.

Aborting Women's Rights

From Carolyn Cooper @ Jamaica Gleaner:

"If men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament." This famous feminist prick (as in sharp point) goes straight to the heart of the current debate about parliamentary reform of Jamaica's backward laws on abortion. The reproductive health and rights of women are not taken seriously in much of the talk on this inflammatory subject.

Instead, male authority figures (and their female surrogates) pontificate on a pregnant matter about which they simply cannot speak authoritatively. Who feels it knows it, intimately. It is true that there are enlightened men who try to understand this contentious issue from the woman's perspective. But they are relatively few.

Data from the Ministry of Health confirm that approximately 1,200 women are treated each year for complications arising from unsafe abortions. And those are just the official figures. In the 21st century, women in Jamaica are still risking their lives in order to claim reproductive rights that women in other countries simply take for granted.

UN Merges Women's Agencies

From Moni Basu @ CNN Politics:

A parade of world leaders took the lectern at the United Nations on Wednesday. But days before the speeches on a host of issues, the global body quietly undertook an issue that often flies under the radar: Women.

Last week, the United Nations consolidated four agencies that tackle women's issues and created a new super agency. Humanitarian workers around the world embraced the move. It was about time, they said, that the world got serious about how half its population lives.

Ahead of this week's U.N. meetings, UNIFEM issued a report on the progress of women's rights, part of a set of development goals that global agencies have committed to achieving by 2015.

Last week, the General Assembly voted to merge UNIFEM and three other U.N. women's agencies to better address glaring gender inequities.

Tonga: Female Discrimination

From Bruce Hill @ Radio Australia:

Tonga's parliament has decided not to ratify an international convention outlawing discrimination against women. It voted 18 to 1 with 4 abstentions to not ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW. The Tongan prime minister's office says he Legislative Assembly believed that to ratify CEDAW would cut across the cultural and social heritage that makes up the Tongan way of life, which is not based on individual rights and freedoms, but on the individual's relationship with the extended family and the wider community.

The Plight of Afghan Women

From Katherine Butler @ the Independent:

One reason for the widespread public support for the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was genuine revulsion at the treatment of Afghan women under the Taliban. Shocking videos of women being flogged or executed by firing squads in football stadiums for "adultery" had been smuggled out by campaigners in the late 1990s. Many people assumed that with the disappearance of Mullah Omar and his extremist followers, women would no longer be regarded as lower in status than farm animals, fit only for household drudgery or reproduction.

Girls would be able to go to school, and their mothers or sisters allowed to work, or even just enjoy ordinary pleasures such as travelling in a taxi, singing, laughing in public, or venturing out of the home without a male relative or a heavy blue cloak covering every inch. Western leaders were eager too to play up the "liberation of the women" as one of the noble aims of the military engagement in Afghanistan.

Pervez Kambaksh has now benefited from a behind-closed-doors act of clemency from the Afghan president. But the fact that the student must flee in fear of his life because he circulated an article questioning attitudes to women in Islam suggests that the supposed introduction of democracy and eight years of war have delivered scant progress.

Activists Scuffle With Islamists

From the Independent:

Sudanese women's rights activists scuffled with Islamists and riot police today before a court session for Lubna Hussein, who faces 40 lashes for wearing trousers deemed indecent by the authorites.

Hussein's case is being seen as a test of Sudan's Islamic decency regulations, which many women activists say are vague and give individual police officers undue latitute to determine what is acceptable clothing.

The judge had adjourned Hussein's last court session to investigate whether she was immune from prosecution because she was working as a press officer for the United Nations at the time of her arrest.

Mali: Backflip on Women's Rights

From Daniel Howden @ the Independent:

Muslim leaders in Mali were declaring victory yesterday after seeing off a new law that would have improved women's rights in the country.

President Amadou Toumani Touré refused to sign a new legally binding family code, passed earlier this month by parliament, that would have meant women no longer had to obey their husbands. The new code instead called for husbands and wives to "owe each other loyalty and protection".

The President was forced to back down after a string of mass protests in the mainly-Muslim West African nation.

Mali: Fight for Equality

From ABC News:

Thousands of people in Mali are protesting against new legislation that strengthens women's rights in the west African nation.

The law, passed by parliament earlier this month, raises the legal age for marriage to 18 and also stipulates that children born outside of wedlock are entitled to a share of any inheritance.

But the head of the National Union of Muslim Women's Associations, Hadja Safiato Dembele, says only a few women support the law.

"A wife must obey her husband," she said.

"It's a tiny minority of women here who want this new law - the intellectuals.

"The poor and illiterate women of this country, the real Muslims, are against it."

Iraq: Women Wrestling Team

From Sam Dagher @ New York Times:

It doesn’t happen much in the Arab world, but a coach here decided in January to start an all-female wrestling team, the first ever in Iraq. The wrestlers love it and already dream of competing in the Olympics.

But there are many in this town south of Baghdad, which like much of Iraq is religious, conservative and governed largely by tribal tradition, who want the dozen girls and young women on the team to stop wrestling immediately. One tribesman has said they should be “slaughtered” if they continue. A Shiite cleric says the team should be banned because wrestling can lead to promiscuity and “transgressions” against Islam.

As a result of the pressure, four wrestlers have quit. But the rest, for the moment empowered by the post-invasion promise of greater democracy and equality, are defying the threats.

But it is the women who have touched a nerve, perhaps partly because of their ambitions. Three other teams were set up in Iraq after Diwaniya’s was formed with the backing of Iraq’s wrestling federation. In June, all the teams took part in a championship, which the Diwaniya team won, qualifying for an Asian tournament in September in freestyle wrestling.

Japan: Women Don't Count

From the Times Online:

The new chief executive of one of Japan’s larger companies sat up late into the night recently puzzling over the accounts. He simply could not work out why there seemed to be so many more people working in the office than appeared on the books.

An assistant explained it to him the next day: we don’t count the women.

Gender equality advocates and women’s groups say that, for as long as anyone can remember, the Japanese political world has done much the same — ignored the interests of half the population, discounted their talents and squandered an economic goldmine.

Those same groups believe that the August 30 general election, for which unofficial campaigning begins today, may represent the single biggest opportunity to subvert a system that feels structurally and emotionally pitted against women.

SA: National Women's Day

Tomorrow, 9th August is National Women's Day in South Africa:

On August 9, 1956 20000 women staged a march on the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against the proposed amendments to the Urban Areas Act (commonly known as the pass laws) of 1950. They left bundles of petitions containing more than 100000 signatures at prime minister J.G. Strijdom's office door.

Outside they stood silently for 30 minutes, many with their children on their backs. Those who were working for whites as nannies were carrying their white charges with them. The women sang a protest song that was composed in honour of the occasion: Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo! (Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock). In the 54 years since, the phrase (or its latest incarnation: “you strike a woman, you strike a rock”) has come to represent women’s courage and strength in South Africa.

The march was led by Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa and Sophia Williams-De Bruyn.

Since 1994 August 9 is commemorated annually and is known as Women’s Day in South Africa. In 2006 a reenactment of the march was staged for its 50th anniversary, with many of the 1956 march veterans attending.

Caroline Norton

(1808-1877)
Reformer for Married Women in Britain

Caroline married George Norton (1827), a parasite who depended on her income and political connections for his own advancement. George sued the British Prime Minister Lord Melbourne (1836) for seducing her after Caroline had sought Melbourne's aid in having George made a judge. The action went against George Norton, who then did all in his power to see that the existing marriage laws in Britain were fully implemented to Caroline's disadvantage.

Caroline discovered that any money or property she possessed or acquired before or during her marriage, was her husbands. And that after the break-up of the marriage, every penny that she earned to keep herself could, by law, be taken from her by her husband. Also, by law, she could never enter into contracts in her own right nor sue anyone. And finally, by law, her husband could take her children and never allow her access to them. That spurred her into action.

Caroline met and collaborated with Mr Telfourd, MP (1837), who had already decided to introduce the Infant's Custody Bill. Together they decided to pursue the Bill further. The Bill reached the House of Lords (highest level of the British parliament) - and there it stayed (1838). Caroline wrote a pamphlet "A plain letter to the Lord Chancellor" under the name "Pierce Stevenson", hoping that under a male persona the letter would carry more weight. The pamphlet was delivered to every MP and Peer (from the House of Lords) and actually received favourable reaction. The Bill was passed (1839). It laid down that a judge might make an order allowing a mother, against whom adultery was not proven, to have custody of her children under the age of 7yo and for access to older children - the Act was amended (1925) to give full equal guardianship.

Then husband George stopped Caroline's allowance (1855). Caroline took up the fight for the Marriage and Divorce Act - it was passed (1857), despite strong opposition from Mr Gladstone. Caroline's pamphlets and work behind the scenes in support of the amendments were of fundamental importance. The amendments included:- the protection of the deserted wife from her husband's claims upon her earnings, the payment of a maintenance allowance, permitting the divorced or seperated wife to inherit or bequeath property acquired after seperation (but not during marriage), and the ability of the woman to enter into contracts in her own right and to give her the power to sue, or be sued. Divorcees could now legally remarry, and the wife might now be entitled to custody of the children and a maintenance allowance. But despite all this, only men could sue for divorce on the grounds of adultery.

Throughout her life, Caroline wrote books, articles, pamphlets, poetry and songs, and four novels. In the final two years of her life, Caroline did enter into a happy marriage.