26 Aug 2014-NPWJ News Digest on FGM & women's rights

Articles

Why have women been excluded from peace-building in Sudan?
By The Guardian, 26 Aug 2014

 The 22-year-conflict in Sudan, which consumed so much of the country’s resources, ended with the secession of South Sudan to become an independent country in 2011, and the fighting played a major role in hindering women’s empowerment in Sudan. Given the importance of empowering women in the country, the UN Development Programme hopes to emphasise gender equality throughout its activities and is helping its national partners to identify and implement a sound strategy in order to promote gender equality and development in Sudan. As in any other society, women’s educational and socioeconomic status is expected to positively influence their participation in peace processes and the renovation of peace-building.

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Zimbabwe: Time to Blow the Whistle on Child Marriages
By allAfrica, 26 Aug 2014

 Child marriages are dangerous because they condemn young girls to a vicious cycle of poverty and reduce their opportunities of having a good life in their adulthood. During one of my field visits in Buhera early this year, I met a girl barely 16, heavily pregnant and expecting her second child from her 41-year-old husband. Although the young mother did not reveal her age, probably out of embarrassment, I later learnt from her peers that she was married off to a renowned farmer in Chief Nyashanu's area while she was in Form 2. She became his third wife. Villagers I spoke to agreed that it was not anything extraordinary. They said it was the norm in the area as the majority of girls in the district and neighbouring areas married before their 15th birthday.

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Witness: Freeing Women From Cleaning Human Waste
By Human Rights Watch, 25 Aug 2014

 A decade ago, Lalibai, then a mother of four, took a stand and refused to remove and dispose of excrement from her village’s dry toilets, work she inherited at age 12. She had been approached by grassroots activists who said it was illegal for anyone to compel her to do this work, and that she had a choice to leave. She decided to claim her dignity and quit.   It’s hard to imagine that powerfully outspoken Lalibai, with her henna-red hair and upright posture, had once accepted cleaning human waste as her life’s duty. Each day she would carry her cane basket from house to house, lift the waste from latrines, and carry it outside the village. She hated carrying waste, found it disgusting, and it was making her physically sick. She was “paid” with stale roti, a flat bread. This job was customarily designated to her community, considered a low-ranking caste. She could not fathom any other life.

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Pro-choice rally at Belfast City Hall
By BBC, 20 Aug 2014

 More than 100 abortion pro-choice activists have held a demonstration outside Belfast City Hall. Organisers say they want the same abortion rights in Northern Ireland that women have in the rest of the UK. The rally was organised by Alliance for Choice Belfast following the news that a teenage rape victim considered suicide after she was refused an abortion in the Republic of Ireland. The baby was delivered at 24 weeks by Caesarean section and is being cared for in hospital. The foreign national had been raped in another country and found out she was pregnant during immigration checks.

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