Gender Violence

The Plight of Women & Young People in the Rohingya Refugee Crisis

By Asa Torkelsson
August 25, 2018 marked one year since violence erupted in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, triggering the massive Rohingya exodus to neighbouring Bangladesh. As the crisis continues with no immediate end in sight, it is crucial to expand and sustain health and life skills services for Rohingya women, girls and youth to locate opportunities amid challenges.

Damning U.N. Report Outlines Crimes Against Rohingya As Children Suffer from Trauma One Year Later

By Farid Ahmed
At 12, Mohammed* is an orphan. He watched his parents being killed by Myanmar government soldiers a year ago. And he is one of an estimated half a million Rohingya children who have survived and been witness to what the United Nations has called genocide.

Rohingya Refugees Left in Limbo One Year On

By Jan Egeland
Aid funding for refugee relief is running out while conditions are still not in place for the safe return of over 700,000 people forced to flee Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh after violence broke out one year ago.

Paid Leave In New Zealand For Victims of Domestic Violence Praised Globally

By Carmen Arroyo
Domestic violence in New Zealand is one of the highest rates in the developing world and recent legislation there that gives victims of domestic violence 10 days of paid leave, without having to present any documentation in support, has been praised across the globe.

Save the Children Warns Untraceable Minors in Italy May be Trafficked

By Maged Srour
Thousands of migrant minors placed in reception facilities upon arrival in Italy, as a first step in identification and later relocation into other structures for asylum seekers, are untraceable and feared trafficked.

States Must Treat Refugees & Migrants as Rights Holders & Prevent Trafficking & Exploitation

By Maria Grazia Giammarinaro
States around the world must act now to strengthen their efforts to prevent and combat trafficking in human beings, including by ensuring that victims and potential victims are considered and treated as rights holders.Many people who fall prey to traffickers are migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, who have decided to leave their country for various reasons, such as conflict, natural disaster, persecution or extreme poverty.

Latin American Migrants Targeted by Trafficking Networks

By Fabiana Frayssinet
The rescue earlier this month of 12 Venezuelan and three Colombian women from a prostitution network that recruits migrants in Peru is an example of the complex web where migration and human trafficking often involve victims of forced labour and sexual exploitation.

Age Appropriate Sexuality Education for Youth Key to National Progress

By Dr. Josephine Kibaru-Mbae and Siddharth Chatterjee
Fifty years ago at the International Conference on Human Rights, family planning was affirmed to be a human right. It is therefore apt that the theme for this year’s World Population Day is a loud reminder of this fundamental right.

Savagery of Rapes of Minors

By Geetika Dang, Vani S. Kulkarni and Raghav Gaiha
Rapes of minors surged from 16 per day in 2001 to 46 per day in 2016. As if this was not horrendous enough, their savagery adds to it.In 2016, 43.3% of the total female rape victims were minors. Around 13% of the minor female victims were of age 11 and below. The deceased victim in the Kathua rape case from a nomadic Muslim community was barely eight years old. Her crumpled body was found in a blood-smeared dress in January, 2018. A group of Hindu men lured her into a forest, kidnapped her, drugged her, locked her in a Hindu temple, gang-raped her and then strangled her.

EU Urged to Ban Early & Forced Child Marriages

By Rangita de Silva de Alwis
Something historic was initiated at the European Development Days (EDD) in early June: the EDD placed women and girls at the forefront of Sustainable Development. Since its inception in 2006, EDD has become a barometer for ideas in global development.

America First or America Alone?

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
The United States’ move to withdraw from the Human Rights Council will have “reverberations” throughout the world in years to come, say human rights groups.This week, the U.S. announced its intention to withdraw from the 47-member Human Rights Council, accusing it of bias against Israel.

Kenya Can End the Moral Indignity of Child Labour

By Jacqueline Mogeni and Siddharth Chatterjee
On 12 June every year is the World Day Against Child Labour. In the world's poorest countries, around one in four children are engaged in work that is potentially harmful to their health.

“A Map and Plan”: When Greener Pastures End in a Blazing Desert

By Mbom Sixtus
“Sometimes when I’m alone, I still get flashes of the grisly images I saw in the desert. I feared I was going to die out there. The people transporting us were ready to get rid of any of us where necessary,” Njoya Danialo recalled as he narrated the ordeal he endured traveling through the Sahara in search of greener pastures.

Zimbabwe’s Long Road to Gender Parity

By Ignatius Banda
Zimbabwe goes to the polls in July for the first general election since the departure of Robert Mugabe, and the jockeying over who will represent the country’s major political parties is in full throttle.

We Need a Gender Shift to save Our Girls from the Jaws of Extremism

By Ambassador Amina Mohamed and Siddharth Chatterjee
Consider this. Boko Haram, the ISIS-affiliated insurgent group has sent 80 women to their deaths in 2017 alone.The majority of suicide bombers used by terror group Boko Haram to kill innocent victims are women and children, US study reveals.

Economies Flourish and Traffickers Profit from the Struggles of Low-Skilled Migrants

By Agnes Igoye
I was 14-years-old the first time I came face to face with a human trafficker. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) raided my home. Ruthless, they demanded virgins and young girls. In a horrifying escape, I endured a treacherous, long journey that ended in an internally displaced people’s camp. I was lucky. Many Ugandan children were not. By the end of the nineteen years’ civil war, UNICEF estimated that the LRA had abducted some 20,000 children.

Protecting the Health & Rights of People on the Move

By Dr. Natalia Kanem
A staggering 258 million people migrated internationally in 2017.While many of these migrants chose to leave their home countries in search of jobs, education, or to reunite with family, many others had no choice but to leave--to escape poverty, violence or a dearth of opportunities for a better life.

Mothers & Children: Addressing Disappearances through a Gender Perspective

By Rangita de Silva de Alwis
At the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials, Justice Robert Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor, charged the world that submitting the enemy to the judgment of the law is “one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”

Myanmar Unlikely to Resolve Rohingya Problem Without International Help

By Trevor Wilson
The lead-up to the Australia-ASEAN Summit in Sydney on 16-18 March 2018 was characterised by widespread and well-publicised protests in Sydney against human rights abuses occurring in several ASEAN member countries – namely Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The Nowhere People: Rohingyas in India

By Neeta Lal
A devastating fire in a shanty at Kalindi Kunj, a New Delhi suburb, that gutted the homes of 226 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, including 100 women and 50 children, has trained a spotlight on India's ad hoc policy on international migrants.

Kidnapped, Abducted and Abandoned…

By Geetika Dang , Vani S. Kulkarni and Raghav Gaiha
Kidnappings and abductions have soared since 2001. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that their share in total crimes against women nearly doubled from 10% in 2001 to 19% in 2016. More striking is the fact that 11 women were kidnapped or abducted every day in Delhi in 2016. What these statistics do not reveal are brutal gang-rapes of kidnapped minors and women, multiple sales to husbands who treat them as animals, unwanted pregnancies, police inaction, and frequent abandonment with nowhere to go—not even to their maternal homes—because of the stigma of a being a “prostitute”.
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