12 October 2021 - NPWJ News Digest on FGM & women's rights

Articles

Health activists fight stigma to raise breast cancer awareness in Gaza
Reuters, 12 Oct 2021

Health authorities and charities in Gaza are stepping up efforts to persuade women to be tested for breast cancer, hoping to overcome social stigma in the conservative Palestinian enclave over dealing with the disease. A mobile testing van has taken to the road, providing scans for some 150 women a day over the past week at the start of the annual international breast cancer awareness month in October.

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‘Evil customs’: why a Kashmiri village abandoned dowries
The Guardian, 12 Oct 2021

Dowries have been illegal in India for the past six decades, but the custom is deeply entrenched. An estimated 20 women a day are murdered or kill themselves in the country because of dowry demands. Every year there are more than 8,000 “dowry deaths”. But Babawayil has had no divorces or violence against women since it banned them.

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UN chief slams ‘broken’ Taliban promises made to women, girls
Al Jazeera, 11 Oct 2021

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has slammed the Taliban’s “broken” promises to Afghan women and girls, and urged the world to inject cash into Afghanistan in order to prevent its economic collapse. “I am particularly alarmed to see promises made to Afghan women and girls by the Taliban being broken,” he told reporters on Monday in New York.

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What the Front Line of the U.S. Abortion Fight in Kentucky Looks Like Now
Bloomberg, 11 Oct 2021

A woman seeking to end a pregnancy in Kentucky after 14 weeks has one choice: She enters a brick building on the edge of downtown Louisville after running a gantlet of abortion opponents determined to change her mind. Patients coming to the EMW Women’s Surgical Center on a recent Tuesday navigated as many as 10 protesters, including a preacher with a microphone, a man and boy holding "abortion is murder" signs and a woman who tried to redirect people to the anti-abortion pregnancy center next door.

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Child marriage kills more than 60 girls a day
Save the Children, 11 Oct 2021

More than an estimated 22,000 girls a year are dying from pregnancy and childbirth resulting from child marriage, new analysis from Save the Children released on International Day of the Girl reveals. With the highest rate of child marriage in the world, West and Central Africa account for nearly half (9,600) of all estimated child marriage-related deaths globally, or 26 deaths a day.

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Turning trauma into a tune: Egyptian band helps women tackle taboos
Reuters, 10 Oct 2021

Misogyny, child marriage, and female genital mutilation (FGM): not the usual topics one may expect to inspire a band in Egypt. But a feminist duo - ElBouma, or "The Owl" in Arabic - is blending old melodies, new rhythms, and bold lyrics to critique abuses faced by women and girls in their broadly conservative north African country. In their new album, the band cover sexism, patriarchy, and gender-based violence, with harmful practices such as FGM still common in remote parts of Egypt.

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The past few months have been harrowing for Pakistani women
Al Jazeera, 08 Oct 2021

The last few months have been particularly harrowing for Pakistani women. From the horrific case of 27-year-old Noor Muqaddam, who was brutally tortured and beheaded in the nation’s capital on July 21, to that of Ayesha Ikram, a TikTok creator, who was harassed and groped on the country’s Independence Day by more than 400 men on the grounds of one of the country’s major national monuments, the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore – it feels as if violence against women has reached epidemic proportions.

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