23 Oct 2018 - NPWJ News Digest on FGM & Women's Rights

Articles

Northern Ireland abortion: Westminster must not miss crucial opportunity to reform law
Amnesty International UK, 23 Oct 2018

Diana Johnson MP will introduce a backbench bill today (23 October) calling for the decriminalisation of abortion in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. MPs are also attempting to amend the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill - due to be debated on Wednesday (24 October) - so that it includes clauses that will force the Government to act upon its human rights obligations by reforming Northern Ireland’s abortion and equal marriage laws.

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'Spycam' epidemic seizes South Korea's women
Al Jazeera, 22 Oct 2018

South Korea is in the grip of a "spycam" epidemic with covert footage of sex, nudity, and urination posted online in what amounts to a "social death penalty" for thousands of female victims. The spy camera phenomenon has reached such epidemic proportions in tech-savvy South Korea that tens of thousands of women have taken to the streets to march for action.
 

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Sabarimala temple controversy turns political as protests grow
Reuters, 19 Oct 2018

A senior leader of India’s ruling party warned on Friday that protesters in Kerala would take the law into their hands if officials attempted to let women enter a hill temple at the centre of a raging controversy. Protests against women entering the Hindu temple grew on Friday, with hundreds of hardliners blocking three women from entering the Sabarimala temple for a third day. The demonstrators were defying a Supreme Court verdict that overturned a decades-old ruling by a lower court denying entry to women of menstrual age, whom some Hindu communities consider to be ritually unclean.

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U.N. Calls For End To Virginity Tests
National Public Radio , 19 Oct 2018

On Monday, Farhad Javid will meet with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his wife, Rula Ghani, to ask whether the president will order the release of some 190 women and girls who are currently in jail for failing a virginity test. Javid is Afghanistan's country director for Marie Stopes International, a global family planning organization. Five months ago, he and three colleagues visited the Mazar-i-Sharif prison and went from cell to cell to count the number of women and girls who had been jailed for failing the test. In Afghanistan, premarital sex is considered a moral crime.

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Senegal: Teen Girls Sexually Exploited, Harassed in Schools
Human Rights Watch, 18 Oct 2018

Abusive teachers and other staff sexually exploit, harass, and abuse adolescent girls in Senegal’s secondary schools, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. While Senegal has taken important steps to expand girls’ access to quality education, it needs to step up efforts to protect girls from these abuses and hold teachers who violate professional norms or Senegalese law, responsible.

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Women candidates face 'small-scale war' in Afghan election
Reuters, 17 Oct 2018

More female candidates than ever are set to contest Afghanistan’s upcoming parliamentary election, braving violence and opposition from social conservatives in a campaign seen as a test of the war-torn nation’s democratic institutions. The growing involvement of women has been welcomed by the United Nations and other international bodies, which see the elections as a vital step in building trust in democratic processes. Campaigning is fraught with risks regardless of gender. Nine candidates, including one woman, have been killed in separate attacks. Another two have been abducted, and four others have been wounded by hardline Islamist militants, election officials said.

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