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22 April 2014 - NPWJ News Digest on FGM & women's rights
Articles
Does Kenya have the courage to lead on women's rights in Africa?
The Guardian, 21 Apr 2014
News of the death of a 13-year-old girl from Kajiado in southern Kenya after she underwent female genital mutilation (FGM) brings to mind another 12-year-old Maasai girl, Sasiano Nchoe, who died in very similar circumstances after undergoing FGM in 2008. Sasiano was buried but her body was exhumed after Equality Now's partner, the Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative, became involved and alerted the authorities. As a result of the autopsy, both Sasiano's father and the person who carried out the crime were arrested and charged with manslaughter. However, delays ensued and it was only after a campaign to get police to implement the country's 2001 anti-FGM law that the trial proceeded and the accused were convicted.
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Women's collective in small Ramallah village view bee farming as a way to learn more about community living.
By Al Jazeera, 21 Apr 2014
For a Palestinian community of fewer than 2,000 residents, the Ramallah village of Bil'in has received significant international attention over the past decade, with weekly Friday demonstrations against Israel's separation wall drawing throngs of journalists, photographers and activists. Receiving much less attention is daily life within the Bil'in community. There, a group of 30 women known as the Bil'in Women's Cooperative has been farming bees and honey since late 2011. The women say they are learning important lessons about community living from the millions of bees they study daily. "We learn a lot from the bees," group member Samaher Abu-Rahma told Al Jazeera. "We learned how to work with them, but we also learned from them. They work together as a community, in uniform and supporting each other. For people, this is a model of living that we can learn from."
Kenya: Couple On Murder Charge After Girl Dies in FGM Case
By All Africa, 17 Apr 2014
Nairobi — A couple has been remanded in custody for seven days after a 13-year-old girl under their care died after undergoing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The accused are the guardians of the girl who is said to have bled to death after undergoing the cut on Sunday. Her 12-year-old cousin who was also to face the knife with her managed to run away after realising what her mother and the circumciser wanted to do. She managed to report to the authorities who immediately moved to the location to carry out the investigations.
But by the time they arrived at the homestead, they found the girl's body lying in a pool of blood.
Boko Haram’s Sick Hatred of Schoolgirls
The Daily Beast, 16 Apr 2014
The abduction of 200 female students from northern Nigeria was not the first attack on girls’ education by the al Qaeda-linked group—and it won’t be the last. The numbers were shocking: “Nigerian Unrest: Gunmen abduct ‘about 100 schoolgirls’” headlined the BBC after guerrillas believed to belong to the al Qaeda-allied group Boko Haram attacked a boarding school late Monday in the Nigerian state of Borno. But this is not the first time that these radical Islamist rebels have abducted girls en masse, and it almost certainly will not be the last. In mid-February, according to local press reports, about 400 members of the group, some of them wearing military uniforms and traveling in military-style trucks, attacked the town of Konduga, also in Borno state, near the borders of Cameroon, Chad and Niger. They murdered 51 people and carried away 20 young women.
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